


Unspoken

by Verayne



Series: Time Lords Victorious [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: M/M, Master POV, Power Struggle, Slow Burn, a friendship infinitely complex, elements of BDSM, in that the first kiss comes long after the first blowjob, is Dialogue Without Plot a fic type? DWP?, questionable use of regeneration abilities, the Doctor still doesn't want to regenerate, the Master never went through the portal to Gallifrey, they construct intricate rituals of keeping each other prisoner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:42:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 44,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22302796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verayne/pseuds/Verayne
Summary: After closing the portal to Gallifrey together, the Doctor finally makes good on his promise to take responsibility for the Master and his crimes. Trapped together in some backwater corner of the universe, there really isn't much else to do but hash out the many old hurts that lie between them.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/The Master (Simm), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Series: Time Lords Victorious [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1681309
Comments: 147
Kudos: 437





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Why did inspiration strike for the first time in over four years for a mostly outdated pairing/fandom, you ask? No idea, enjoy the results. 
> 
> This is a finished fic of around 42k, and I'll be posting the chapters over the next few weeks as I finish editing. 
> 
> Warnings: Dialogue-heavy and slightly plotless, but there's also some graphic smut in here. I'm not going to warn for individual chapters as I think it breaks flow, so blanket warning: contains elements of BDSM (including orgasm denial, punishment, power play) and safewords are NOT discussed. Potentially looks like dub-con (although I assure you, everyone involved is getting what they asked for). Very vague mention of past suicides, and the Master's canon-level cruelties/crimes.

"I should be flattered, I suppose. You've spent hundreds of years collecting pale imitations of me, haven't you?"

The Doctor sighed tiredly. "They weren't -"

"Although I'm not sold on the likeness, tell you the truth." The Master wrinkled his nose. "All those starry-eyed girls and boys you kept clinging to your coat tails. Not very _me_ , is it?"

He watched as the Doctor fiddled with a section of the control panel. Not trying to achieve anything, from the looks of it, just poking discontentedly at the buttons. He kept his back turned, his long, pale hands ever restless.

The Master looked down at his own hands, stretched out either side of him and trapped by the bracelets of the handcuffs the Doctor had magicked up from about his person, then used to secure him to the horrendously uncomfortable bench seat in the control room. The cuffs on his left wrist were covered in fluffy pink fur. The Master was pointedly refusing to ask, and the Doctor hadn't volunteered the information. He tugged idly at the short chains - one, two, three, four times. They were more of a mood-setter, really, than a valid attempt to hold him for very long, but he was willing to let this play out a while longer.

"Still, got me back where you wanted me at last, I suppose. Come on then, what's the plan? Are we to drift along like this for blissful eternity? Me: the dashing, devilishly handsome captive, swept away by you: the tortured, brooding prison guard…" He tilted his head in consideration, stretching until his hips lifted briefly from the bench. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not entirely uninterested -"

The Doctor threw a quelling look over his shoulder. "Stop that."

"Well what _do_ you intend!" He rattled the handcuffs obnoxiously. "You really think you're going to keep me like this for the next few years? The next few _hundred_?"

The Doctor turned at last. His eyes flashed, and for a moment the Master thought he'd successfully piqued his illustrious temper, but the other man visibly contained himself. His hands buried themselves in the pockets of his awful suit jacket, and he leaned back against the console, pinning the Master with what he no doubt imagined was an inscrutable stare.

"Honestly? I'm not sure yet, what I'm supposed to do with you." He looked sad, of all things, that ridiculous hangdog expression. "I can't let you go. Not after everything."

"I saved your life! Must count for some brownie points, surely."

"Not nearly enough. You're my responsibility."

The Master scoffed. "Don't pretty it up, I'm your _project_. You've just been _dying_ for this, haven't you? Your perfect chance to lord all that saintly morality in front of me, hoping it'll catch."

The Doctor smiled without humour, turning his face away. "Yeah, you got me. Just what I've always wanted to do with my lives: play eternal caretaker to _you_."

"So don't."

The other man's gaze swung back to him and held, a muscle clenching in his jaw. "I'm not letting you go. You can't be trusted on your own."

"Then kill me."

"No."

The response came so fast that the Master blinked, brought up short by the flat denial. He cast about for a new track. "You can't seriously expect to keep me here? Like this?" He tugged again at the cuffs - one, two, three, four. "The indignity."

"I'm going to take us somewhere," the Doctor said, with the slow cadence of someone making a decision even as he spoke. "Somewhere away from… everything. Where you can't hurt anyone. And I'll stay with you, I promise you that, for as long as it takes."

He felt a sneer curling his lip. "I'd really rather you kill me, if it counts for anything."

The Doctor didn't bother to respond. He turned away, moving to manipulate the control panel with more intent. The Master leaned one way and then the other, trying to get a look at coordinates or viewscreens, but had apparently been strategically placed so he couldn't see anything useful. The TARDIS lurched and shuddered around them with a great heaving groan that meant the idiot hadn't disengaged the parking brake.

He strained against the cuffs in earnest now. The way he was pinned meant he couldn't reach the locking mechanisms with his fingers, so instead he just pulled - one, two, three, four painful jerks. His heartsbeat rose with sudden animal need to be free, utterly certain he didn't want to go wherever the Doctor was taking them, until depleted electrical energy rose and surged through him, whiting his vision. The cuffs sliced into his skin, ground against the bones of his wrist as he struggled. The TARDIS slid inelegantly into motion, jolting him backwards. Again - _onetwothreefour_ \- baring his teeth as blood began to soak through his sleeve.

The pink fur cuff gave first, naturally. It snapped in a victorious spring of metal, and he reached quickly for the other -

And then the Doctor was there, catching his damaged wrist in one hand, pressing the sharp point of a hypodermic into his neck with the other.

The Master stilled, staring at him in surprise and faint, unreasonable betrayal. The electrical energy he tried to summon dissipated in an instant, chemically suppressed. His vision dimmed.

"You really are… a right twat, aren't you?"

The Doctor hurriedly set the used sedative aside, moving instead to support the back of his head as he started to slump. He sounded very far away.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry this was done to you. I promise I'll try to fix it, okay? I promise it'll be okay."

The Master wanted to laugh at him, long and loud; wanted to swear and rage and claw; wanted to marvel at the disregard, the sheer thoughtless _audacity_.

But he was unconscious before he could do any of that.

* * *

He woke to silence.

Well. Not true silence, never that. There was always the drums.

But he couldn't hear anything else.

He was _hungry_ , came the second realisation. Ravenous. It had never quite gone away, before, but he'd been able to relegate it to the back of his mind during all the excitement. Now it was back and furious, demanding of his whole attention, clawing at his insides until his guts cramped. He groaned, twisting onto his side and trying to curl round the core of agony in his abdomen.

The spasm passed after a few minutes, leaving him gasping with a relief he knew wouldn't last, his mouth salivating like he was going to vomit. Slowly, he got a shaking hand under himself and sat up, trying to gather his scattered bearings. He wasn't handcuffed anymore, at least.

The room he found himself in was dim and unadorned, the only furniture a desk, a chair, and the bed he'd been lying on. He looked down at himself. Still wearing the oversized black hoodie he'd scavenged back on Earth. It stank of old dirt and sweat and blood, not all of it his own. One of the sleeves had been pushed up to accommodate a catheter buried in his arm. He touched it carefully, frowning as he tracked the line up to the bags of intravenous medications above the headboard. Antibiotics, saline solution, terminally sterilised nutritional formulae. The good Doctor, indeed.

He hissed as he pulled the catheter out, dropping it to stain the bedsheets with fluids. His wrists had been bandaged too. Fresh blood from the insertion site dripped down across the cotton dressings. Standing, he had to brace himself against the nearest wall for a moment as his legs threatened to give out. The familiar feeling of an electrical surge jolted through him again, making the edges of his vision flicker white, but it seemed less intense than it had. Like there was less and less available energy to expend, he supposed. He staggered upright, disgusted by his own weakened state.

"Doctor!" The name burst from him in fury. He scanned the room, looking for a camera he could scream into. "You can't just lock me in here! _Doctor_!"

He moved to the door, ready to slam his hands against it in defiance. He almost fell straight out into the corridor when it slid swiftly open at his approach.

The Master froze, unprepared for the apparent freedom. His hands twitched nervously at his sides, fingers tapping one-two-three-four against the pads of his thumbs. He edged forward, peering warily one way and then the other along the TARDIS corridor. It was silent and dark, empty as far as he could tell. No guards, not even active security cameras. Not a single soul ran to tackle him as he stepped from the room.

Well. That was unexpected.

He turned left towards where he remembered the central control room being, hand trailing along the wall as he walked. At every corner he prepared to find some barrier or another, something to hinder his progress, but there was nothing. He didn't call out again, reluctant to alert the Doctor if he really was somehow oblivious that his unwilling patient was awake and mobile.

The door to the control room slid open when he pressed the access button, not so much as a code required. He stepped through cautiously, flexing his hand and debating how badly it would damage him to summon up a bolt of electricity if he needed it.

The room was empty and still. He glanced around, taking in the blank screens, the abandoned central column. The unobstructed door off the ship.

But before he could move, said door creaked open and the Doctor bustled back inside, distracted as he patted down the pockets of his trench coat and kicked it closed behind himself. It took a moment for him to realise he wasn't alone, performing a cartoonish double-take when he finally did notice the Master.

"Oh. You're up. Hi."

The Master said nothing, keeping most of his awareness on the door behind the Doctor, wondering if it was going to come to a physical scrap between them if he wanted to get to it. Not much dignity in it, but needs must. He rolled his shoulders in preparation.

To his escalating bewilderment, the Doctor only sidestepped out of his way. Even gestured for him to pass.

"You can go outside, if you want."

He didn't move. Couldn't see the trick yet, blamed whatever drugs he'd been hooked up to while he slept for slowing his thoughts.

"Not much of a view," the Doctor continued apologetically. "And the weather's nothing to write home about. Best I could do, sorry."

Slowly, the Master circled round the column of the control panel, closing the distance. "What are you playing at?"

"Nothing. You really can go outside, I won't stop you."

"Why not?"

The other man shrugged, hands in his pockets. "You were right, I can't expect to keep you locked up in here. In a cage. Like a _pet_." His expression was suddenly quite glacial.

The Master grinned, in more familiar territory now. "Ah, _there_ they are, all those hurt feelings. So that's what this is about."

The Doctor seemed to catch himself, at that, reaching up to scrub his hands down his face, then gesturing as if to negate the conversation. "Look. Just. Nevermind. Go, go see for yourself, we both know you won't believe me otherwise." And with that he backed clear across the room, leaving the path to the door wide open.

The Master darted forward before he could change his mind, past the dark central column and onto the walkway. The grated metal flooring shuddered loudly beneath him in the eerie silence of the ship. He reached the door and pressed his back to it while he felt for the handle.

The Doctor made no move to stop him, just stood watching from the recesses of the control room.

He half expected to open the TARDIS door into the empty void of space, or maybe the blinding flare of a nearby sun - some other nasty, unsurvivable joke at his expense.

Instead he was met with vacant, grey, damp terrain as far as he could see. He blinked in the face of it. Featureless, for the most part. Flat to the horizon, earth littered with an uneven scatter of rocks and the occasional boulder. Nothing else, no green. Yellow-grey clouds towered in the white sky ahead of them, smudges of colour beneath indicating distant rainstorms. The wind made a whispering scrape against the scree, but he could hear nothing else. Aside from the drums.

He stepped out, boots crunching into the gritty dirt. "Where is this?"

Clanging footsteps as the Doctor crossed the walkway behind him, coming to lean his shoulder in the doorway. "Doesn't have a name, really. Never populated. There's theron radiation at the core. Harmless to you and me - well, the odd tension headache, maybe, on bad days - but lethal to most other species in the universe. No one else can get near."

He really couldn't help the smile of vague appreciation that passed across his face, although he kept his back turned so it went unseen. "Ah, I see. Aren't you the clever one. No locks, no chains - just a barren planet with no hope of escape. That's shown me, hasn't it?"

"I know it's not what you want," the other man said quietly. "But it really is the best compromise I could find."

He surveyed the scene ahead of him, calculating the chances that the Doctor was simply lying. For all he knew, there was a fully functioning city within walking distance, in one direction or another. He'd seen no scans, no _proof_ they were alone here. He walked out further, began to circle the TARDIS, looking from one horizon to another. Searching for something, _anything_ , that might indicate there was a chance, but there was nothing in the landscape on which to snag his hopes. Bleak, boundless grey wherever he set his gaze.

Except, of course, for the blue box.

He shifted his attention as he circled a second time, focused inwards now. Maybe the planet was populated and maybe it wasn't. Why bother finding out, when the faster option was parked not three feet away. He came to stand as he had been, scuffing at the rocks underfoot, careful to keep his back to the Doctor and the ship as though in disinterest. He might only have one good shot at this. It had to count.

" _No_. Don't. Don't do that. I know what you're thinking. We both know your next plan is going to be to try and take control of the TARDIS."

The Master closed his eyes, biting off a sigh of irritation at the accuracy of the guess. "Well you hardly get credit for that one. Apparently it's the only ship off this rock. What else am I supposed to do?" He turned, arching an eyebrow in challenge.

The Doctor said nothing, just continued to watch him with that stupid sad expression. The Master itched to slap it from his face.

"What, not even a _little_ worried? No high and mighty threats to stop me? No charming speech, no grand plan -?"

"I already did."

"Already did what?"

"Stopped you."

The wind plucked up the words, whistled mockingly as it played with them. The Master narrowed his eyes, trying to find the bluff in the other man's face, trying to race ahead to anticipate him. His attention flicked beyond him, back to the shadowy depths of the control room. The very dark, very quiet, very still control room.

Recognising the beginnings of realisation, the Doctor hitched a shoulder dejectedly. "You can't fly the TARDIS off the planet. Neither of us can."

"What did you do?"

And finally, like a crack through glass, the Doctor flinched.

The Master shouldered roughly past him, back into the TARDIS. Not even the faintest vibration of a resting engine beneath his feet, he realised distantly, amazed he'd missed the detail until now. The few lights overhead were electrical, emergency power. He prowled the central column, reaching out to brush his fingers over inactive controls, astonished when no faint flicker of sentience reached back to the command of a Time Lord.

"What did you do?!" he demanded a second time, although by now it was fairly obvious. "She's _dead_."

* * *

He'd killed a TARDIS, once. He'd inadvertently broken a fair few more, even lost a couple. But he'd only ever killed the one. It was no small task, after all. They were living. They tended to defend themselves.

He'd never attempted to set up home in the lifeless shell of one, though. That was a fresh new perversity entirely of the Doctor's making, credit where it was due. Without the temporal engines to fuel, life support systems could keep them in basic power indefinitely. Light, heat, food replicators. Even most of the sprawling rooms would still be functional.

"You should let me…" The Doctor gestured awkwardly from where he was hovering at the edges of the room. "Examine you. You're not well."

"I need to eat," the Master answered distractedly. He wasn't sure how long had passed since either of them had last spoken. He wasn't even sure the Doctor had been here the whole time, or if he'd left at some point and come back. He'd been listening to the rhythmic pounding in his head, steadily rising since the moment it had sunk in: the full extent of what the Doctor had done to them. Now the consuming hunger reasserted itself, raking claws down the inside of his spine, his ribs. The familiar white flash blinded him, and he knew he was again leaking lifeforce.

A hand touched his shoulder, grounding.

He spun, lashing out so that his palm connected with a crack of electricity. The Doctor shot backwards, crashing inelegantly into one of the coral struts. He sank down with a muffled groan, shirtfront singed and smoking. All things considered, he didn't seem particularly surprised by the exchange.

"I need to eat," the Master said again, toneless. He was tired. "Where's your kitchen?"

The Doctor pointed, and let him go.

* * *

It had taken all the Doctor’s wheedling, irritating efforts to pry him from the kitchen and the endless supply of foodstuff offered by the replicators. Not that any of it helped, really. If the unnatural hunger hadn’t been satisfied by eating two or three humans back on Earth, inhaling useless bits of poultry and carbs and sugar was unlikely to fuel his dying body any better.

So now they sat in tense, loaded silence. The Master stared fixedly at the wall opposite, determined to do nothing that would acknowledge the situation in which he'd found himself.

"Can you tell if it's working?"

He ignored the question, busy scratching at the skin around the catheter that had been returned to his vein. It stung and itched, the strange heat of donated artron energy radiating up through his arm and shoulder, spreading invasively across his chest. It was difficult to keep still with it. He clenched his fist against his thigh to stop himself frantically tapping out the beat of four.

"Do you feel any different, at least?"

The Doctor sat on the other side of the room watching him intently, the heels of his trainers knocking against the base of the hospital bed he was perched upon. His jacket lay discarded beside him and he'd rolled up his shirt sleeve to accommodate his own set of surgical tubes and wires. He'd been trying to make failing conversation since they first started the procedure. The Master wanted to throttle him into silence.

It had taken all his frayed self-control and dubious command of reason to convince himself to submit to the treatment. The humiliation of the prospect had almost been enough to make him refuse. It would serve the Doctor right, to have stranded them both here for his supposed benefit, only to stand helplessly by as the Master burned and bled his lifeforce away before his eyes. He would have enjoyed seeing that steadfast superiority broken; hearing the whinging pleas for the Master to live, to not leave him alone again. It had been such an unexpected treat last time.

But that choice necessitated he admit defeat in being trapped here, and that he would not do.

He was _the Master_. He refused to allow anyone - much less this man - to dictate his fate, his punishment, in such a manner. He had already resolved that he would leave this planet of his own volition if it killed them both, provided he got to see the Doctor's smashed hopes in the seconds before. But to achieve that, he had to live long enough. And in these unfortunate circumstances, that meant resigning himself to accepting the Doctor's help.

He flicked his gaze over the medical equipment between them, watching the steady trickle of the Doctor's artron-rich blood pass between them. As it invaded his veins, he could feel it starting to trigger the dormant regeneration instinct of his dying body, at least enough to begin healing the damage of his botched resurrection. His hearts raced with imposed exhilaration. His skin flushed gold in places, burning away the bruises around his wrists, the cuts on his face.

Disgust rose in his throat. Such horrendous intimacy.

"Well that looks -"

"God, would you _shut up_." At last he deigned to slide a glare across to the other man, infuriated that he'd been driven to it. He gestured, slightly wildly, at the gurgling transfusion equipment. "Is this not enough? You want to _talk_ , too?!"

The Doctor shrugged awkwardly. "Thought you might want to get a few things off your chest."

"Well you thought wrong." He'd intended to resume sullen, uncooperative silence, but his indignation got the better of him. "You realise this isn't some… some _sabbatical_ you've brought us on? This isn't our chance to ' _talk things through_ ' - or whatever charming outcome you're envisioning here." He let his voice lilt nastily, mouth curling in a sneer. "We have nothing to say to each other."

Diplomatically, the Doctor chose not to reply.

* * *

He found the TARDIS wardrobe and shed himself of the vile hoodie and jeans as soon as he was able. His mind felt clearer than it had been since before his resurrection, finally rid of the constant rake of hunger and bleeding energy. In its place, his vanity pricked him.

Still the face of Harold Saxon - still _blonde_ , he realised bemusedly as he regarded his reflection, swiping back the pale fringe damp from the shower. He'd been rather hoping that would be among the flaws to revert under his forced healing. He'd never been much of a blonde. But he felt better for being back in a suit, at least. He smoothed his hand down the trim charcoal waistcoat he'd found, adjusted the fall of the slim-fit suit jacket. He'd matched it with a sleek black dress shirt, privately astonished the Doctor owned anything so reserved in colour-scheme.

He suspected it had become an important ritual among newly regenerated (or partially-regenerated) Time Lords: this careful construction of image, the tweaking of appearance to match persona. Clothes maketh the newly made man, after all. There was nothing quite so disconcerting as continuing to walk around wearing the husk of the being you'd been before.

His pride somewhat restored, he set about determining the fastest way off this miserable whore of a ship.

His first priority was examining the control room for himself, unwilling to take the Doctor's word alone that the TARDIS was permanently grounded. He began by familiarising himself with the controls around the central column, wildly horrified by the inelegant modifications and improvised repairs that had been grafted on over time, as the Doctor must have wrestled with flying his stolen ship meant for more than one pilot. That done, he began to deconstruct: digging into the workings of machinery and systems to find out what exactly had been sabotaged and whether he could indeed engineer a fix. Before he was halfway through his investigation he'd already resigned himself to the futility. If nothing else, the Doctor probably wouldn't allow him such unrestricted, unobserved access if he knew there was even a half-chance the Master could affect a repair. Sure enough, when he pried open the access panel to the TARDIS's inner heart, where the space-time element should be located, and instead found it dead and cold and empty - he wasn't particularly surprised.

He knelt on the metal floor in front of the controls in momentary defeat, running a hand through his hair and inadvertently swiping oil through the pale strands.

The next tack was to catalogue the available communications systems. If he could find something that would broadcast a distress signal, to a nearby ship or satellite perhaps, he could request rescue. And depending on how successfully that went, he might find himself in possession of a new ship of his very own. But of course, his options were slim pickings. It didn't take him long to realise the Doctor must have made a concentrated effort to remove or destroy any external communications device he could think of which had previously existed on the TARDIS - up to and including the archaic mobile phone he'd once carried on his person. It was impressive commitment, the Master had to concede. But not quite thorough enough.

He spent the next few days repurposing parts of the derelict control panel, an obsolete translation software, and one unfortunate kitchen appliance to scrap together a not unimpressive long-range communicator. By the time he was tweaking the finishing touches, he found himself sitting cross-legged atop the raised upper walkway which ran around the edges of the control room, the haphazard device gathered in his lap. His tie had been pulled loose at some point and his shirt jacket hung over the railing nearby.

"Testing, one-two-three-four," he called, half-mockingly. "Anyone out there?"

Static silence in response. He adjusted some settings, plucking carefully at the wires. It was difficult to tell the exact range of the thing; he could have been more precise with a sonic device at his disposal, but he'd worked without tools before when necessity demanded. He was certain the thing would broadcast at least a few continents' worth of distance across the planet - just in case the Doctor was wrong about its uninhabitability - as well as up into the atmosphere.

"Hellooooo?" He racked his brain for basic introductions in other common languages, reeling them off with steadily decreasing optimism. He even tapped out some binary with his knuckle against the metal railing - but gave it up when it began to devolve into the quickpace beat of four.

The door to the control room slid quietly open and a soft scuff of movement announced the Doctor's presence. He didn't look up from his tinkering as the other man drifted closer, coming to stand below the walkway he was perched on. For a moment he thought the Doctor had come to try and stop his efforts, but with some confusion he watched from the corner of his eye as he instead reached up and placed one of the steaming mugs he'd been holding onto the edge of the raised platform next to the Master's knee. It occurred to him, belatedly, that he had neither eaten nor slept since he first began working.

The Doctor started to retreat without further comment. The Master flicked a glance at the offering.

"I hate coffee now."

The other Time Lord paused, hesitating with the mug that had been raised halfway to his own mouth. He gave a short sigh, then wordlessly came back and swapped the drinks, nudging the mug of tea within reach instead. The Master made sure not to acknowledge the action.

Frowning sceptically at his newfound coffee, the Doctor again turned to leave. Halfway through the door, he called over his shoulder, "And put my toaster back together when you're done, please."

Two days later, in a last ditch grasp at hope, the Master found a console capable of running a planet-wide scan for life signs. As he programmed in the parameters - as wide and varied as he could think to make them, not particularly caring if this rock was inhabited by sentient _plantlife_ if it only meant the Doctor was wrong about their chances of company - he hesitated, unsure what his next plan of action would be if this too proved fruitless. Then, annoyed at his own uncertainty, he activated the scan and waited impatiently for the results.

Two. There were exactly two life signs currently detectable by the system.

He let out a noise of frustration through gritted teeth. It was really happening, then, as far as he could determine, this ridiculous threat of the Doctor's. And for the moment, at least, he was unable to think of another feasible option that could lead him out of the trap.

He stood up. If he was staying here, he decided he wouldn't be doing so meekly.

* * *

He found the Doctor sitting in a plush armchair in the library - no, that was too generous a description. He looked like he was familiar with sitting only in the purely theoretical sense: his socked feet drawn up under him until he was almost crouched, one elbow braced atop the back of the chair, head cocked at a ridiculous angle as he examined the book he appeared to be holding up sideways in front of him. A precarious stack of other volumes were piled on the floor next to him. He looked up as the Master neared.

"Look, I finally have time to finish reading -"

"Why _strand_ us?" the Master demanded without preamble, ignoring the pleasantry. "There were so many other things you could have done - why this?! _You_ can't want to be here either!"

The Doctor lowered his book at the outburst, eyebrows raised. He seemed to think about it for a moment. "Well, I realised nothing else would work."

The Master circled around the chair, restless and angry and spoiling for a fight. "You said you wanted to travel together."

"I did. I would."

"Then why -"

"You know why." The Doctor twisted so he could look back over his shoulder at where the Master hovered in his blind spot. "You would have run at the first opportunity."

He bit back the response which jumped immediately to mind: that that had always been more the Doctor's style than his, in all their nine hundred or so years' acquaintance. He stalked the length of a shelf stack, reaching up to hook a finger over the spine of a book in passing and tumbling it to the floor in his wake. "So… what? We're just supposed to _exist_ here? Doing what, exactly?"

The other man shrugged. "Whatever you want. I haven't put any of the TARDIS off limits. Believe it or not, this isn't meant to be torture for you."

"I beg to differ."

"Why?! Because there's no one here for you to… to lord over? To hurt?"

"There's you."

He turned slowly on his heel to pin the Doctor with a deliberating look. Perched awkwardly in his armchair, blinking owlishly under the scrutiny, the Doctor had never looked more like prey.

He darted forward, and immediately the Doctor was on his feet, backing up a step around the chair before he could stop himself. The Master didn't relent, pressing closer into the other man's space, crowding him backwards until the Doctor hit the bookshelf behind him. The Master brought his hands up to slam either side of him.

"Still afraid of me, then."

"Course," the Doctor admitted easily enough, if a little stiffly. He leaned his upper body incrementally away, as far as he was able in the enclosed space. "I'd be an idiot if I wasn't, knowing what you're capable of."

"And yet here you still are." In such close proximity, he took the opportunity to catalogue the other man greedily. The scatter of freckles, the faint crease of frown lines, the mouth parted with nerves to show a glimpse of sharp, slightly uneven teeth. He liked the physical quirks of this regeneration. If he would just _shut up_ once in a while, was kept still and controlled - he'd almost quite enjoy this iteration of the other Time Lord.

The Doctor tilted his head back to lean against the books behind him, exposing the line of his throat. The Master wasn't sure if it was condescension or a deliberate attempt at distraction. He flicked his gaze over the exposed carotid regardless.

"Better us both here, than you out there alone tormenting whatever helpless planet you come across."

The Master smirked, tilting further into the Doctor's space just to see if he'd flinch. "Is that it, then? You're going to _subject_ yourself to me, for the greater good of the universe?"

The Doctor studied him back, dark eyes flicking between his own. His expression was blank, cruelly so. "It's what you've always wanted, isn't it? My undivided attention?"

For a suspended moment, they both clearly expected him to lash out at that. The Master's breath caught in his throat and his skin prickled under the flash-heat of shame, outrage. The Doctor twitched backwards imperceptibly, mouth set tight as though braced for the Master to hit him.

But neither of them moved, and for long seconds the silence stretched. At last the Master drew a breath, close enough to smell the other man's cologne and adrenaline. He smiled narrowly.

"You say that as if I haven't always had it."

The Doctor broke first, turning his face aside as though dismissive. He reached up and brushed one of the Master's arms away, slipping out from where he'd been pinned. "Stop. We don't have to make this another fight. We don't even have to see each other all that much, if you prefer. It's a big TARDIS."

The Master almost scoffed. No, he would not be allowing the other man to sidestep the comeuppance of his unilateral 'justice' quite so neatly. If this was to be their existence now, at least for the foreseeable, then the Master had just found his new and best entertainment.

He settled for dragging a lingering glance over the Doctor, a wordless promise of his interest and displeasure, before turning on his heel and leaving the other man to worry in his library.


	2. Chapter Two

Even for Time Lords, it quickly became difficult to measure the passage of time as they were accustomed to it. Whatever planet or moon they were idling on had a slow rotation; so far, what passed for day here stretched on largely unmarked by changes in light or temperature, although they'd both already succumbed to sleeping several times. Sometimes a storm would pass by, turning the cloudcover an eerie yellow and bringing an acrid, mineral smell with it. The Master would stand in the TARDIS doorway whenever it did, watching the rain. It was the only movement the landscape ever offered.

He understood quickly that boredom was to be his enemy here, as real and dangerous an opponent as the Doctor himself. Boredom let his thoughts wander, allowed his attention to settle too closely on the beat of the drums. He'd always craved activity and motion; newness and volatility. Even on Earth, for those few years he'd lingered as Harold Saxon, there had been new challenges, novel entertainments, cheap power struggles amongst his political rivals. And, of course, there had always been Lucy. He'd enjoyed, fleetingly, the experience of keeping a human - although she hadn't withstood his affections for as long as he'd anticipated.

It wasn't that he had anything _against_ humans, per se - although it had always irked him, somewhat, how the Doctor idolised and indulged them like favourite pets, refusing to hear a bad word said even as they gawped vacantly up at him like overbred, brainless pedigrees who couldn't understand not to take a shit on the rug. The Master didn't understand the appeal. They were just so painfully slow and shallow, despite the cheap imitation of Time Lord physiology that could trick the eye for a moment or two.

"Whatever happened to the lovely Martha Jones, by the way?" he asked on the tail of this thought, as he strode into the Doctor's haphazard engineering lab. Needling the other Time Lord had become his favourite defence against the ever encroaching monotony. "Did she go by the wayside, after we parted ways that time?"

The Doctor jumped at his sudden appearance in the doorway, glancing up from the computer screen in front of him with a vaguely guilty expression. A few swift keystrokes closed the screen down and he sat back in his chair. He'd finally ventured out of his privacy-locked bedroom, in which he'd taken refuge since the last time the Master had successfully driven him to breaking point, but had apparently been under the impression that he'd done so unnoticed.

"No. She went back to her family."

"Oh, so _she_ left _you_? Turn up for the books." He sauntered a few steps further into the room, hands buried in his pockets. "Well. I supposed you did ruin her life a bit."

"Me?! You were the one -" He cut himself off with visible effort, reaching up to remove his glasses. "It wasn't like that. We were... fine. She'd just had enough."

"Of you."

"Of... travelling. Danger. Yeah, and me, I suppose. Why are you suddenly so interested? What do you want?"

He shrugged. "Just trying to get a feel for what's in store for me as your new unwilling tag-along." There was a loose data card beside the Doctor's computer, and as he passed by he reached out to flick it off the edge of the desk. It landed in front of him, and he carefully aimed the heel of his shoe and shifted his weight.

"N-!"

They both heard it crack loudly beneath him.

The Doctor sighed, tossing down his glasses in peevish defeat, shooting him a glare.

The Master smiled blandly in response, moving past him and further into the lab. "What _would_ your friends think of you if they knew you'd let me live, I wonder. That we were shacked up together, even!"

"Less," the Doctor answered, concisely.

He flicked an annoyed look at the back of the other man's head, changing tack. "So go on then, who came next after Ms Jones? We both know you didn't last long on your own. Whoever would you show off for?"

No response was immediately forthcoming.

"It wasn't the old man, was it? That's scraping the bottom of the barrel for an audience, even for you."

"Wilf? Wilf was great. Liked Wilf."

Unseen, the Master rolled his eyes; his memories of the bustling wrinkly weren't nearly so fond. Still, he'd been a well placed bargaining chip, in the end. The Master being able to free him from the irradiated chamber unharmed had been about the only thing that prompted the Doctor to stop him being pulled into the timelock alongside Rassilon.

He considered the memory, then whirled round to pin the other man with a triumphant look as realisation struck. "No, it was that other one, wasn't it? On the phone. Your 'best friend' you worked so hard to keep away from me. Tell me about _her_."

The Doctor's shoulders rose defensively. "Nothing to tell."

"Why wasn't she with you, then?"

"Hadn't seen each other in a while."

He replayed the scene in his head, turning over details he'd dismissed at the time. "A metacrisis, your good old Dad said. What metacrisis? What did you do?"

A hitched shrug. "Wasn't on purpose. Accidental exposure to excess regeneration energy. There were some... side effects."

"She didn't turn as part of my swarm. So she really was - what - _part Time Lord_?"

"Not like you think. Ended up with all my memories. All our potential, racial instincts, exponential learning. Except... human body, still. Human brain."

"Would have killed her," he said immediately, sceptical.

"Yeah." The Doctor nodded slowly, arms folded tight around himself. "Would have done. Still will, if she ever has to remember."

The Master drifted closer, coming to stand just behind the chair and frowning in thought. "You suppressed it?"

"Yup. She's got no idea who I am anymore. Can't go near her, just in case."

He absorbed the information in silence, examining it from different angles. He could hear the guilt suffusing the otherwise pragmatic account as easily as if the Doctor was broadcasting it on all channels. It was the same way he sometimes spoke about Martha Jones, or the other Earth girls he liked to gather round himself. The Master deliberated a moment, and then carefully let one hand settle on the Doctor's shoulder. The other tensed beneath the touch, ready to shake him off, but he only squeezed once as though in consolation.

"Sometimes I remember why we used to be friends," the Master mused wistfully. His thumb brushed gently along the back of the Doctor's neck. "You're so creative with how you break them."

He was up out of the chair in an instant, recoiling. The Master laughingly darted back to avoid it crashing into his shins, grinning with anticipation as the other man furiously rounded on him.

"Don't you _dare_ say that to me."

"What?! I'm giving you a compliment, I'm genuinely impressed!"

"Shut up."

"Oh, don't be like _that_." He followed close at his heels as the Doctor stalked round the table and towards the door of the lab, almost tripping straight over him when he ducked down to sweep up the cracked data card and shove the pieces angrily into a pocket. "All I'm saying is we've got different ways of going about the same goal, me and you. I'm more of a numbers guy, bigger picture. But you! It's artistry, really, picking away at one helpless stray at a time -"

They made it to the corridor before the Doctor turned on him again, sweeping a hand out to force some distance. "I'm asking you, properly, to not do this."

The Master sidestepped the outstretched hand, swayed straight into his space. He enjoyed doing this: dismissing the boundaries and watching the Doctor fluster in response. "Can't wait to see what you've got in store for me," he murmured.

"I didn't hurt any of them on purpose," the Doctor snapped. He glared down at him, nostrils flaring. "And I'm not hurting you. I _never_ tried to hurt you. Which is better than you can say."

They remained in standoff for a few long seconds.

Then the Master huffed a humourless laugh. "Liar," he accused quietly.

The Doctor flinched. He took a step back, wide eyed, then turned to walk silently away.

* * *

He liked to prick the Doctor's conscience with cruelties he'd done to individuals: the Doctor's friends, the Master's former wife, some random minister he'd gassed to death when he'd taken over Number 10. It didn't matter who, as long as he was careful to talk in terms of ones or twos, as long as he gave them _names_. Because that was how the Doctor saw the universe, now: it only touched him when it had a face, a voice, a name. He fell in love with the wonders of existence all over again whenever it looked at him with big, starstruck eyes and held his hand.

The Master had done far worse in his many lives than torment a few hapless allies the Doctor deigned to call 'friend'. In his years away from Gallifrey, he'd ruled cities of lesser races under boot-heel; crowned himself king, emperor, magister of peoples too terrified to look upon him. He'd burned down whole worlds in his frustration and apathy, and there were races of creatures which existed now only in his bloodied memories, gone from the universe at his whim, simply because there had been no one there to stop him in the moment.

But these things had long ceased to hold any real meaning to either of them, he was sure of that. They were distant, factual events; lists of numbers and dates and atrocities he knew the Doctor could recite easily enough if he had a mind to, with little more inflection than the standard moralising disapproval. He couldn't be blamed, really.

You killed enough people and it just wasn't a tragedy anymore. More of a statistic.

* * *

"Doctor, I am _bored_."

He watched the screen intently as, on it, the Doctor pulled his head out of the wall panel he'd practically crawled into trying to reach the deep cluster of wires he was repairing. His disaster hair stuck out at even more angles than usual, testament to his latest dubious venture in trimming it himself. He looked one way and then the other along the corridor, expression comically suspicious as he searched for the source of the Master's voice. His mouth moved, but no sound filtered through the footage.

"Sorry, what was that? Didn't quite catch."

The Doctor immediately looked up into the camera, scowling. He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, pulling out his sonic and aiming it up at the display. Audio crackled on, slightly tinny through the speakers.

"What are you doing?"

The Master glanced round at the cramped observation room, lined with screens showing various rooms and corridors throughout the TARDIS. Most of them were dark and abandoned, unfrequented by either himself or the Doctor and so left to stasis. He'd chanced upon the discovery of this little hub while exploring the upper decks of the ship, and seized upon the potential for fleeting diversion.

"Hosting a dinner party."

"Why are you messing with the cameras? Wait, where even _are_ you?"

"Where do you think? In your observation centre."

The other man looked slightly disconcerted. "Didn't know I had one of those, to be honest."

The Master rolled his eyes. "You really did let this TARDIS get away from you, didn't you?"

"I liked to encourage her creativity…" He shook off the reminiscence, gesturing instead at the open wall panel. "Stop playing spy, you could be helping fix the auxiliaries you broke."

"I think we both know I'm not going to do that."

"Then leave me in peace while I do it." He turned back to his work dismissively, tip of his tongue poking from his mouth in concentration as he continued threading wires back into place within the circuitry.

The Master narrowed his eyes, annoyed. He cast about for inspiration. Then, smirking, he settled back in his chair to get comfortable. "You know, I've played this game before."

A wordless, inattentive questioning noise drifted through the speakers.

"In my year ruling Earth, on the Valiant. The Freak escaped a few times - did you know?"

That caught his attention, at least. The Doctor turned to pin the nearest security camera with an unimpressed stare. "His name was Jack."

"Yeah, that's the one. Anyway, Jack the Freak kept trying to get to you. It was all quite _sickeningly_ romantic."

No response.

"Didn't get far the first few times, of course. But then I realised how much _fun_ it could be! A loose chain here, an unlocked door there, and out he'd creep." The Master walked his fingers along the arm of his chair, smiling at the memory. "Didn't seem to matter how much I hurt him afterwards. Oh, Doctor, you should have seen it. Always so unfailingly hopeful that _this_ was the night!"

"I don't need to hear this."

"We'd watch on the security feed. Lucy and I liked seeing him run. We took bets, it was brilliant fun. Like having a pet rat - you know, the ones you can put in a maze? Only it didn't die in the traps. Well. It did, I suppose. Just that it always got back up again - _really_ , quality entertainment."

"Stop it."

"I can see why you kept him around, though. He really was lovely to look at, for a breathtaking perversion of reality."

" _Enough_ , now." The Doctor's voice snapped through the speakers, brooking no debate. He started towards the camera. "I know what you're trying to do, and it's not going to work. I will not be pulled into an argument so you can pass the time!" And with that, he aimed his sonic up towards the display and it flicked off.

The Master darted forward, reaching for the buttons of the console that controlled the security footage. He tapped rapidly and brought the camera back online, but the Doctor was already gone. Movement on one of the screens to his right caught his attention and he rolled his chair after it, following along the screens as the Doctor stalked through the corridors of the TARDIS. He was about to call out to him, mocking, when it dawned on him where the other man was fleeing to. He waited, instead.

The Doctor disappeared into his bedroom with a great show of setting a locking mechanism on the door, which slid firmly closed on the corridor camera feed. The Master tapped at the console keys a few times, and the screen switched to footage inside the room, where the Doctor stood agitatedly running a hand through his hair. He was clearly unaware he was still being observed, as to the Master's great delight he shrugged off his suit jacket and draped it over the back of a nearby chair, before starting to pull loose the knot of his hideous tie.

The Master leaned close to the microphone on the console, dropping his voice to a throaty whisper. "Slower."

On screen, the Doctor looked like he sprained something spinning around so fast, gaze darting around until it located the camera. "Wh- Nhk- There's not supposed- When did you put that there?!"

He couldn't help but laugh, holding up his hands in innocence despite not being seen. "I didn't, I swear. Your TARDIS always was awfully over-familiar; maybe she liked to _watch_."

Glaring up at the camera, the Doctor jabbed his sonic again and cut the feed.

The Master made a few swift keystrokes and turned it back on.

In his room, the Doctor tossed the screwdriver onto his desk in irritation, before resuming whatever routine had been interrupted. He toed off his ridiculous red trainers, finished unknotting the tie and slid it from his collar, before moving on to efficiently unbuttoning his shirt.

Grinning, the Master again leaned right into the mic. "That's right, Doctor, take it _all_ off…"

It was an interesting convulsion he appeared to be having on screen, twisting dramatically away and clutching the edges of his shirt back together like some prim Victorian miss. The Master cackled, thoroughly enjoying himself.

"Get out, _right now_ , of whatever… _hideout_ you've found! And give it a rest with the surveillance!"

"Oh come on! You were just getting to the good bit, don't stop now."

Hunched over as he re-buttoned his shirt, the Doctor threw a furious look over his shoulder, all traumatised propriety. "Out! Now!"

"Stop being a prude."

"Stop being a menace!"

"I'm _bored_."

"I _know_!" The Doctor visibly heaved a sigh, dropping to sit on the edge of his bed. He braced his elbows on his knees and dragged his hands down his face; with his chaotic hair and open collar, he looked the picture of harried dishevelment.

"You don't like me when I'm bored, Doctor," the Master murmured, distracted in tilting his head at the screen as though he could somehow get the right angle to peer down the tantalising gap of open shirt. "I get… creative."

"Believe me, I'm well aware." He pinched the bridge of his nose, paused in thought for a few seconds. At length, he held his hands out in question. "Alright, fine, what can I do to help?"

Surprised, the Master blinked. "Well. You weren't doing terribly with the strip-tease, to be honest."

Seemingly against his better judgement, the Doctor huffed amusement. "Other than that."

"Sure? Oh, go on. I can always set the mood a bit, hang on…" He resumed typing, bringing up another computer system. He scanned through the options, then selected what he was looking for with a narrow smile, jabbing play with a flourish.

The opening strains of Britney Spears's _Toxic_ blasted through the TARDIS comms.

The Doctor gaped up at the camera, momentarily at a loss. His mouth worked soundlessly, and then a snort escaped before he could stop it. He coughed as though to hide the lapse, and then promptly dissolved into genuine, unconstrained laughter.

The Master leaned forward in his chair, fascinated. It had been a long time since he'd done anything to earn that particular sight, even if it was filtered through the pixelated footage of a surveillance camera.

"You're ridiculous," the Doctor accused, voice raised over the music. His eyes were bright and dancing, grin stretched in delight.

To his private mortification, alone in the observation room, the Master found himself mirroring the expression. He tried to wipe it from his face, self-conscious - but as the breathy vocals of the first verse kicked in they both lost it all over again, giggling like children.

* * *

Occasionally, of course, it was impossible to maintain the energy that their frequent hostile sparring required. Orbiting each other in their shared space, too resigned to fight, they fell to even older habits and found themselves participating in actual _conversations_.

"We veered away from a timeline," the Master mused one mealtime, pausing in the act of raising food to his mouth as he remembered. "Did you feel it?" That jolt of switching tracks on a moving train, swerving a car into the next lane over. Watching the last portal to Gallifrey close and feeling the swooping drop in his stomach as the gravitation of prearranged events shifted around them.

"I did, yeah."

"You weren't supposed to do any of this. We're not supposed to be here. You _changed_ something." He considered for a while, then raised his eyebrows in vague appreciation. "Thought it was only the little people we could do that to, honestly."

Opposite, the Doctor set his book pages-down on the kitchen counter and sat back in his chair with folded arms, gaze somewhere distant over the top of his glasses. "I think I'm supposed to be dead. Well, this version of me, anyway. There was a… a prophecy, sort of thing. About me dying. I thought it was going to be you who did it."

"Who says it wasn't meant to be?"

The Doctor shot him a sour look, then frowned. "Watch, you're dripping."

"What?"

"Dripping. On the counter."

He looked down at where milk had splashed onto the metal surface, swiped at it with his sleeve. "Oh. Sorry." Finishing the mouthful of cereal, he dropped the spoon back into the bowl and slouched back in his own chair to mirror the other man's dour posture. "Altering your personal timeline for self-preservation. Pretty sure that's against the Laws."

The Doctor made a noise of reluctant concession. "Bit."

"Look at you, playing fast and loose."

His companion shifted uneasily. "Does it count, really, if we're the only ones left to enforce them?"

He thought about it, intrigued. "Well you've always known my opinion, even before we were a self-governing society of two. We're Time Lords. The architects of time and space. Why shouldn't we change whatever we want?"

"Universe-ending paradoxical consequence?"

"Seems like it's still chugging along nicely." He glanced around. "I can only speak for our private hellscape, of course."

The Doctor rolled his eyes, reaching up to slide the glasses off his face. He held them on the counter in front of himself, turning them restlessly between his hands. "What do you think would have been different, though?"

"Oh don't do that."

"What?"

" _Think_ everything to death like that."

"It's a natural question!"

" _No_ , it's not. You don't ask yourself what'd be different every time you choose... I don't know, _toast_ instead of eggs for breakfast."

"Cholesterol levels, I'd imagine."

The Master sighed. This was exactly why they weren't suited to these kinds of discussions.

The Doctor shrugged. "Alright, well my choice of breakfast doesn't typically impact whole timelines. With this… I don't know what I've changed, what I've given up."

"That's my point, you never do. Just because we felt the switch this time doesn't make that any different."

The other man looked sceptical, but seemed to be having trouble vocalising an argument. His trainers scuffed under his chair as he thought about it for a few minutes, and the Master busied himself sipping from his mug of tea.

"It's just…Well, it never really goes well."

He regarded him with a frown. "How often, exactly, do you go around breaking the Laws of Time to have an opinion on it?"

At that, the Doctor all but squirmed on the spot. He scratched at the back of his neck, screwed his face up, made some incomprehensible vowel sounds. "Not like I made a habit of it, or anything," he settled on eventually. "But, you know, I thought I was the only Time Lord left. I used my discretion sometimes."

"Your ' _discretion'_? How does that work?"

"Oh…. Doesn't really matter, does it?"

The Master bared his teeth in something like a smile, sensing the discomfort. "I think I need to know. If you want a fully informed opinion, of course."

The Doctor rubbed at a spot on the counter. "…Harriet Jones."

He blinked, running a quick mental search for the name. "Who or what is Harriet Jones?"

"Supposed to be the leader of Earth's 21st Century Golden Age."

"Supposed to - wait, that senile Prime Minister?"

The Doctor flinched. "She wasn't exactly… I was having a bad day, alright? I'd _just_ regenerated, aliens were invading the planet, _again_ , and she - she lied to me and I… may have reacted."

The Master drummed his fingers as he thought back; stopped abruptly when he finally placed the timeline in question. His eyes widened, grin stretching despite himself. "But that's -"

"I know."

"But she -"

"I _know_!"

"You _broke a fixed timeline to make me Prime Minister_!" His delight was impossible to conceal so he didn't try, hands flattened to the counter surface as he leaned forward in his enthusiasm. "And I thought you didn't care!"

"It wasn't on purpose!" the Doctor hissed desperately, flustered. "I didn't know you were still alive, let alone that you'd… you'd step straight into the bloody gap in the timeline!"

"Well _someone_ was going to! What else did you expect to happen?!"

The other man dragged a hand down his face, visibly wincing. "Well, there you go, you've proven my point! I thought I could control the consequences of changing things, and instead the disaster that is you happened."

"Sweet talker."

The Doctor shot him a tired glare, deflated. "You can see why I have concerns."

He marveled quietly, struck speechless at this revelation - no, this _reminder_ of the other man's anarchic streak, buried somewhere under the façade of straight-laced morality. _This_ was the Time Lord he remembered: expelled from the Academy for his conceit; stealing a TARDIS in petulant retaliation; and now, left to his own devices, apparently quite capable of dismissing the most basic Laws their people had used to govern the universe. He wanted to laugh, incredulous and thrilled. There had been a friendship, once, built wholly on that shared chaos in their souls.

"Sometimes I think I can still feel it," the Doctor commented at length, and it took the Master a moment to recall what they had been discussing before the digression. "That other timeline, I mean. Like I'm still running parallel to it. Sometimes I think I could step back across, if I wanted. Die, and regenerate, and set everything back the way it would have been."

"And do you? Want to." He almost held his breath, although if pressed he couldn't have explained why the answer mattered.

The Doctor considered. He looked unhappy and guilty, picking anxiously at the corner of his book. "No," he admitted eventually. "I don't want to be some other version of me. I like this one."

The Master let the breath go in a rush, disorientated to feel the dual reactions of disappointment and vindication, and mentally scrambling to parse them before he gave himself away. This version of the Doctor - for all his protests and preaching and displays of reluctance - embodied the steel-willed arrogance that had been necessary to imprison them both like this in the first place, and think himself right to do so. They were in opposition, and he had just done nothing more than reaffirm his intention to remain that way; his belief in his own unassailable convictions; his entitlement to dictate. Damn the consequences, and damn the universe that would dare to change him when he did not consent.

But then, the Master had always liked him better in the moments his iniquities were laid bare between them.

He cleared his throat, struggling to regain some measure of composure.

Apparently oblivious to his inner conflict, the Doctor half-smiled apologetically. "I know you don't agree, but I still think it was the better choice - for both of us - to come here. We've lived too long. We're not good for the universe anymore."

"You're right about that: I disagree strenuously." He picked up his bowl of cereal to resume eating. Then, compelled, added quietly, "Must admit, though. Didn't think you had it in you anymore. Playing rebel, meddling with timelines."

The Doctor regarded him seriously. "You know, there were two Time Lords left standing in that room when it veered. _One_ of us changed the timeline, can't say for sure it was me." His mouth tipped in a lopsided grin. "Maybe _you're_ the one who changed things to save me."

The Master screwed up his face in irritation. "Oh, you really do ruin everything."

* * *

Other times, they went long stretches without seeing each other. It really was a big TARDIS; labyrinthine, almost. Plenty of space for the two of them to haunt different rooms, uninterrupted.

Sometimes, the Master couldn't stand to be around him, couldn't bear the sight of his hated face. The boredom would gnaw too deeply, glut itself until it became fury. The sensation of being trapped would press in on him, too close to breathe comfortably, and he'd skulk away to the hidden places. There in the dark he'd rage with it, tear at the mechanics of the ship as though he could bring down the walls of his prison. He'd plunge his hands into the inner workings of wires and circuitry, rip them out like arteries. He'd smash out any screen that dared reflect him, fascinated by the shatter-flash of glass and electricity. He was a creeping parasite in the bowels of the TARDIS, hoping that if he hurt her enough she'd finally expel him from this grey place and it would be done. But a dead thing felt no pain, and each time he was only left amidst the broken comet trail of his destruction with bleeding hands and pounding head.

One-two-three-four, one-two-three-four.

What he really wanted to do, in those moments, was hurt the Doctor. He was to blame. _He_ was the one who had dared impose an authority he had no claim to. Well, he had chosen to place himself in this cage with the Master, and the Master would ensure he felt the bite of that. He would carve the consequence in his flesh; break the bones of his righteous certainty. He would pin him down, just as he had trapped the Master, and _choke_ until all that patient compassion dimmed from his eyes.

But then, of course, there would only be another Doctor in his place. Some other unknown. He wondered what would happen if the Doctor regenerated as the Master murdered him, was reborn staring into his eyes. Would they be more alike, then? A Doctor created in violence and madness, maybe even able to hear the drums at long last. He wanted that, sometimes, with a kind of rabid desperation.

But it was far from guaranteed. Another Doctor, born defending himself, might just as easily kill him outright: fast and surgically precise so that a regeneration never came. The Master held no delusions. The Doctor had always restrained himself before, but he had the capability.

Perhaps, then, _he_ should be the one to act with surgical precision. A kitchen knife to the other man's primary heart; to the base of his skull, up into that brilliant brain which sparked thoughts like galaxies. Too quick and final for the golden glow of regeneration. Slice it out of him, if it came.

But then he really would be alone.

If anything terrified him more than this continued purgatorial existence, it was living it on his own.

_One-two-three-four! One-two-three-four!_

And so he was held motionless by yet another prong of the trap, splayed by his own indecision. He would chase the thoughts in circles in his mind, round and round again, never progressing. It hurt. He became an animal chewing its limb to escape the vice, stuck there until the roar of the drums got so loud he couldn't hear his own thoughts. That, at least, was a mercy. It stopped the endless looping, and he could finally crawl from the dark, sharp hole he'd dug himself in the depths of the ship, go stumbling back up towards the light.

Always, then, the Doctor would find him, as though called by the SOS drumbeat in his skull.

**_One-two-three-four! One-two-three-four! One-two-three-_ **

"There you are." The Doctor crouched down to peer beneath the console under which he was huddled. His eyes crinkled at the corners in greeting. "Hello."

The Master wasn't sure how long it had been since they'd last seen each other; he couldn't always track the passage of time like he should. He looked different. Or perhaps he'd just grown more familiar with the Doctor of his violent imaginings.

"Come on, up you get." The other Time Lord held out a steady hand. "I made tea."

The Master took it.


	3. Chapter Three

He'd killed his first body on purpose.

It had been damaged irreparably, so he'd thought. The noise in his head that no one else heard, that he couldn't drown out, couldn't ignore, couldn't exorcise. Something must have broken in him when he'd looked into the Schism, something that hadn't been strong enough to withstand the revelation. It had left an injury that never healed properly, trapped him in his imperfect body beneath the dignity of a Time Lord. So he'd killed it. It had felt perfectly practical, at the time.

Nothing violent, that hadn't been necessary. A slow, sleepy poison; as gentle with himself as he could permit. He'd lain down to die full of cautious hope, expecting to wake to long awaited silence. Theta - he hadn't been the Doctor then, not yet - had found him before it happened. He hadn't understood. Still on his first body himself, still afraid of the unknown, never having quite believed about the drums anyway - he'd never had a hope of understanding. He'd tried to wake him, tried to save him, been caught in the vicious blast of regeneration for his troubles. Just the first time they'd hurt each other quite that badly.

He'd woken up as the Master, with the drums still beating steadily in his head, and they'd never been anything as clean as friends since.

He wondered sometimes if the Doctor ever thought back on that memory. If he understood better, now. Probably not. The Doctor had always preferred to fix things than start again, even if the repairs were shoddy, spit-and-tape work. Anything less was too close to admitting defeat.

The Master had never been nearly so sentimental with himself. His bodies, his selves, had always been disposable. He'd liked some of them better than others, true, but the moment they became damaged, detrimental or otherwise inconvenient - he held no compunctions about forcing a restart. He'd burned through three of them in fast succession trying to escape Gallifrey during the Time War. Rassilon and the council had wanted to use his mind, his violence, his engineering creativity to win their battles, while the Master had just wanted to leave. They'd tried to weaponise him. It hadn't been a far reach to realise he could weaponise himself; his deaths and regenerations.

So, no. There was nothing of sentiment involved. The drums were a lingering imperfection that stayed with him in every body he'd ever had, so what did it matter. The wound that followed him through Time; the damage that made him less than he should be. It was difficult to want to preserve something that started out broken in the first place.

Still, some days were worse than others.

* * *

The Master couldn't stop moving. For hours, he'd walked in circles through the TARDIS corridors, the heels of his hands pressed hard over his eyes. By now he thought he could feel the drumbeat vibrating just behind the bones of his skull, the frenetic pace urging him to action. What action, he wasn't sure. This was how it always started, though.

He stopped, staggering over to lean against the nearest wall, growling his frustration into the fold of his arms. He could hardly hear the sound over the roar of the drums. It used to be that he could go much longer periods without these... episodes. When he kept himself occupied, he could sometimes go years. But here - trapped and bored and sedentary - they were becoming ever more frequent, and he was growing sick of losing his control to the noise in his head.

He straightened, squinting round as he tried to figure out where on the ship he'd found himself. It took a few moments, and he bared his teeth slightly when he realised. He stalked forward past a few more doors until he came to the entrance to the Doctor's lab, rapidly jabbing in the passcode when he found it locked.

The other Time Lord was standing on the right side of the room, and turned to blink at him curiously as he entered. He opened his mouth to say something - a greeting or a question, maybe - and then seemed to register the look on the Master's face. He closed his mouth without making a sound, setting down the folder of papers he'd been holding on a nearby surface. He took a careful step forward, raising a hand.

"Hey. Let me help -"

The Master snarled, surging forward and closing the distance before another word could be uttered. His hands fisted in the Doctor's suit jacket, and the force of the impact bore them both backwards into the wall behind him. The Doctor grunted as his spine struck the metal, and the Master immediately brought his forearm up to jam against his throat, forcing his chin up. He had to angle upwards to pin the taller man, standing on tiptoes to hiss into his face.

"You've spent nine hundred years leaving me behind, running through the _fucking_ stars, and now - like this - _this_ is how you decide to stop? You had no _right_!"

He'd expected resistance at the sudden physical altercation, had brought all his weight and strength to bear in anticipation, straining with the force with which he held the other man in place. But the Doctor did nothing. His hands stayed compliantly at his sides, twitching up only once as though to grab the arm against his throat, but ultimately subsiding. He squirmed a little to try and steal a breath, gagged when the Master pressed harder in response, but still didn't actually attempt to free himself.

"Still playing the pacifist," he sneered, incredulous. "You don't have to pretend with me, Doctor. I know what you are, remember. I know all the things you've _done_. Come on, where's that legendary temper?"

Eyes watering with discomfort, the Doctor blinked wet lashes down at him. A muscle clenched in his jaw, apparently at the effort of remaining pliant. He shifted slightly, up on his own toes to try and lessen the pressure against his airway, but he kept his head tilted back and throat exposed practically in invitation.

Fury flared in the Master, and he reared back from the chokehold, fisting his hands again in the other man's shirtfront and using the grip to slam him harder against the wall so that the air left him in a rush. Before he could recover, the flat of his hand cracked across the Doctor's cheek in a sharp slap, whipping his head to one side with the strength of it.

"Fight back!" he demanded, pushing at his chest. "Do something. Give me _something_."

The Doctor straightened, working his jaw from the sting of the blow. Still, he made no move to free or defend himself, instead widening his stance and leaning heavier against the wall at his back. He looked straight at him, open and unresisting.

"I am. I'm giving you permission."

The Master stared at him, his own expression guarded as he fought to control the immediate, heated flare of interest that rushed through him at the suggestion. The drums pounded hard behind his eyes, in the veins of his wrists. His hands flexed against the other's shirt; he'd popped loose one of the Doctor's buttons at some point, dragged the knot of his tie too tight. He could feel the living warmth of him against his knuckles through the thin material, the quickpace beat of his hearts. He pulled back a little, frowning as he studied the Doctor in earnest. His face was flushed with colour, slightly darker on one side from the slap. Mouth parted, breaths dragged faster past those sharp teeth. His eyes, intently watching in return, were blown wide and dark.

The Master finally huffed a disbelieving sound, bemused enough that he inadvertently loosened his grip. "What, really? _That's_ what this is?"

As though suddenly caught, the Doctor blinked in surprise, then clenched his jaw in obvious embarrassment. He tilted his chin up, and the Master wondered if he felt the first sting of humiliation at being seen.

"You want this," he accused, unable to stop it sounding slightly like a question. "You've been waiting for it."

The other man's throat worked as he swallowed, and for the first time he glanced away. "I'd have thought you'd enjoy the opportunity."

"You're serious."

The Doctor's eyes fluttered closed for a second, and when they opened he kept his gaze fixed somewhere over the Master's shoulder. When he answered it was barely audible, the word pushed from between gritted teeth. "Yes."

" _Why_?"

Again the other Time Lord kept silent, seemingly unable to vocalise a response.

So the Master answered his own question. "Is this what guilt does, Doctor?" he whispered. He shook his head, scornful and disbelieving; utterly enchanted. "Is this the reward of your precious conscience? You want me to be your… what? Penance? Exact some tawdry little punishment for all those rules you broke, all those times you failed at being _good_." His lip curled on the word with fleeting mockery, but he couldn't stop himself staring in open fascination.

For a final moment the Master hesitated, caught unprepared by the turn this had taken, and by the strength of his own reaction. His anger had guttered somewhat, but in its place something else was rising: a complex beast of resentment and desire and heady power. He inhaled slowly with forced control, determined to remain composed. Then, testing his suspicion, he moved one hand from the Doctor's chest, down his side, his ribs, to grasp one bony hip. In a sudden burst of movement, he shoved him back against the wall and pushed close. The Doctor made an aborted sound and the Master let his eyes fall closed, relishing the telltale sensation of the other man's erection pressed against him.

He grinned nastily. "Defeats the point a bit, if you're enjoying it this much." He rocked his hips forward harshly, grinding his own rapidly hardening cock against the Doctor's thigh, and dug fingers into his hipbone hard enough to bruise. The Doctor hissed, the back of his skull thumping against the metal wall as he jerked his head back in reaction. Breathless, the Master raked his eyes over the length of his throat, wanting to bite. "I'm right, then? You want me to hurt you?"

The moment stretched, both of them near vibrating with restraint. He could feel the Doctor's tension, his pride struggling to submit enough to answer. He watched his face, hungry for every flicker of embarrassment and guilt and lust. The other man started to turn away under the scrutiny but the Master refused to allow it; he got a hand up over his shoulder, buried his fingers in the dark hair at the base of his skull and twisted cruelly, dragging his head back. To his delight, the Doctor winced in pain and his cock gave a traitorous twitch where it was pressed against him.

"Say it," he insisted, voice low and persuasive. "Tell me you want me to hurt you."

"I… Please."

"Use my name."

Teeth bared in obvious humiliation, eyes bright with anger, the Doctor glared wordlessly back at him. He wondered incredulously if this was somehow the step too far in this strange little standoff; whether giving voice to the request was somehow the bigger perversion. He made himself wait, rapt with attention, desperate to see the moment of either defiance or defeat.

All at once, the strength visibly left the other Time Lord. His shoulders dropped, and his eyes closed tight in a flinch.

"Master. Please. I want it to hurt. Want you to hurt me."

Unable to stop himself any longer, the Master groaned as he sank forward, finally giving into the need to bite the exposed throat offered to him. His teeth closed tight on the juncture between neck and shoulder, and the Doctor jerked in his arms. Then, as he bit down harder, he made a pained noise that went straight to the Master's cock. He tightened his grip in the other man's hair, forcing his head even further back so he could admire the shallow wound, leaning up to lick indulgently over the ragged teeth marks. He hid his face there for a moment and inhaled the smell of him, struggling to control his own reactions: his blood was screaming through him, his hearts racing, the drums deafening. He felt feral with excitement and cruelty.

Tentative and restless, the Doctor's hands rose to grip his shoulders, the back of his neck, his waist.

The Master pulled back, batting aside the questing hands dismissively. Before the Doctor knew what was happening, he grabbed him by arm and shoulder and spun him round, slamming him back into the wall chest-first. The arm he held he pushed up at an awkward angle towards the other's shoulder blades, until he grunted and arched his spine in protest. Satisfied, the Master held him like that and stepped in close again, stretching up to nip sharply at the nape of his neck.

"You don't touch me unless I tell you to. We're not fumbling teenagers anymore, Doctor. You asked me for something specific. Yes?"

Face turned to one side against the wall, the Doctor eyed him sullenly over his shoulder. "Fine."

He jerked the arm higher in reprimand, earning a yelp.

"Yes! Sorry. I'm sorry. Master."

He savoured the words, indulging in the moment with a grind of his hips and debating how best to elicit more shamefaced contrition. Sparing a glance back at the room, he picked out the spot that would be better suited to what he wanted. One hand keeping the Doctor's arm pinned high behind his back and the other reaching up to grasp the scruff of his suit jacket, he hauled him backwards with enough force to almost trip him. Off balance, it was easy enough to wrestle him across to the low row of consoles and shove him until he tipped forward across them. He struggled instinctively, so the Master draped his weight over the length of his back. He grabbed the wrist that was still free and currently trying to lift the other man up off the console, quickly pulling it behind his back alongside the other, straining for a few seconds to keep him pinned like that.

The Doctor stilled abruptly, breath heaving rough and audible from him. Pressed as close as he was, the Master could feel the slight tremors that carried up his spine. He hummed in appreciation, stroking after the fluttery sensation of fright, wanting to preserve it in his memory for later examination.

"You're afraid."

"…Yes."

"Good." Let that be part of this. The Doctor had asked for punishment, after all; to be made penitent for all his perceived past sins. And while the Master cared little for whatever imagined wrongs he'd committed against the many peoples of the universe - if that was indeed the source of his masochistic guilt - he did care very much about the wrongs that had been done to _him_. The hundreds of slights, the dismissive provocations he wasn't sure the Doctor even noticed. Even this, here, now - trapped in this barren hell together because the Doctor _knew best_ , and still he had the nerve to ask this of him so he could assuage his own guilt.

Let him be afraid. Let him know the feeling, for once.

He reached up, taking hold of the Doctor's jacket collar and pulling, working the clothing down his arms. About halfway he stopped and twisted the material, deftly fixing it to secure the other man's arms behind him, tangled awkwardly in the knot of his jacket. Enjoying the freedom to explore, the Master ran his hands over his shoulders, the top of his spine. He braced his weight there a moment, pushing him down harder against the console and making it difficult to breathe. He relented when no protest was forthcoming, instead trailing further down to scrape his nails lightly over the base of his back. He tugged loose the shirt there and pushed it up until he could see skin. The Doctor's hands clenched and opened again, anxious. The wild danger of the moment was incredible, they both instinctively understood. The Master could do anything, take anything he wanted, and there was absolutely nothing to stop him.

"Did you miss this?" he asked suddenly, surprising both of them. He hadn't intended to speak the question aloud. "With me, I mean."

The Doctor was quiet for long seconds. Eventually, he moved just enough to glance back over his shoulder, as though uncertain whether or not he was allowed. Their eyes met, flicked quickly apart.

"Yeah," he conceded at last, with gutting honesty. "I missed everything with you."

And that was almost as intoxicating as his admission of fear. The Master wanted them both, wanted everything: his fear, his pain, his want, his-

He stopped the thought short, returning to the present moment with conscious effort. He leaned forward, sliding both hands around the other man's slim waist, trailing down until his fingertips just grazed against the hardness between his legs. The Doctor made a sound low in his throat, hips inching forward as though to chase the light friction. The Master didn't let him, withdrawing his hand to instead reach for his belt buckle. He tugged it open with some difficulty, along with the fly of the other man's trousers, and then with ruthlessly efficient movements he pulled both trousers and underwear down to his knees. The Doctor immediately tensed all over, jerking with surprise and discomfort, and twisting futilely against the knotted jacket that held him. The Master kicked gently at the inside of his ankles. "Spread," he instructed, and then stood back to admire the result.

It wasn't so much the physical body which was revealed to him that made his cock twitch with interest - he couldn't see much beyond the Doctor's skinny bare arse, with the position he was in. But his humiliation was evident, and the Master drank in the sight. Tangled in his jacket, his hands were clenched tightly into fists, nails digging crescents in his palms. His shoulders were raised, shaking faintly with those same tremors. He'd moved so that his forehead was pressed down against the surface of the console, and an unflatteringly deep flush of shame was spreading across the back of his neck. The Master reached up to stroke across it, then slid his fingers proprietarily into the unruly, sweat-damp hair.

He'd missed this too, if he was being honest.

"Still want it to hurt?"

The Doctor shivered beneath him, voice muffled. "Yeah."

"Why?"

"I… What?"

"Tell me why," he repeated, firm and implacable. "Say it."

"I don't…" He stopped, frozen, the words caught in his mouth. "I can't."

The Master reached for his own belt buckle, opening it with audible clicks, and then pulled the belt free with a long, soft hiss of leather. "I want you to tell me what you're sorry for," he said again, as calmly as he could manage. He folded the belt over into a loop, flattened it down, the metal buckle held tight in his palm. "And I told you to use my name."

The Doctor was rigid with tension and anticipation, shifting restlessly against the console. His long fingers opened and closed on empty air. "I don't… Everything. I don't know where to start. Master."

"Pick something," he snapped, impatient now.

"I… hurt people," he admitted at last, sounding reluctant. "Out of anger. Because they came after me, or -"

The Master brought the belt loop down hard across the other man's flank. The sound of it split the air, loud and thrilling, and the Doctor's voice rose in a stunned shout of pain. There was a resounding second of silence, and then a ragged gasp followed with the aftershock. The Master exhaled hard through his nose, staring intently at the red stripe already blooming across pale skin.

"What else?" he prompted, adjusting his grip on the belt.

"I let some of them die," the other man hissed, voice fraught. "I couldn't save them, or didn't want to -"

He lashed the belt the other way this time, vicious, catching the back of a bare thigh. The Doctor barked a protest, arching helplessly up off the console before slumping back, already panting. The threaded edge of the belt left a thin streak of blood in its wake this time.

"Keep going."

"I… hurt my friends. All of them. You were right."

 _Crack_ , went the belt, licking a painful red strip across his left arse cheek. The Doctor ducked his head forward on a groan, the muscles in his arms and shoulders visibly straining. The Master placed a firm hand on the small of his back, reminding him to stay down.

"I can't - can't be alone."

 _Crack_.

"I'm not a good person without them."

 _Crack_.

"I used them. Ruined their lives -"

 _Crack_!

The confessions tumbled out of him, faster and less coherent with every swipe of the belt. At some point he stopped resisting completely, sinking down so the console took his full weight. His voice grew rasping, breaking at the edges of words.

"I broke the Laws. Because I could. No one to stop me -"

He snapped the belt loop across a tender inner thigh and the Doctor's legs threatened to buckle in response, something like a sob escaping him. The Master paused, waiting to see if he got himself back under control, satisfied when he managed to steady.

"I… _Gallifrey_."

He hesitated minutely, and then slashed the belt down, catching across a hipbone.

The Doctor gave a full-body shudder, head bowing, a whisper of wrecked sound escaping him. He continued to shake, staggering slightly where he stood. Ugly red welts streaked across his lower back, his arse, the tops of his thighs. Some bled freely, others already dark with bruising. The Master swallowed, flexing stiff fingers around the metal buckle in his hand. He was still desperately hard and his own breath came fast with exertion - harsh enough in his ears that he didn't quite catch all of the next muttered admission.

"...you."

" _Louder_."

There was a pause as the Doctor gathered himself, rocking slightly against the console. "I shouldn't... M'sorry I left you, back then. Didn't believe, about the sounds in your head. Should have helped. Should have stopped them, I'm so sorry. And this, being here. I want, I wanted, I -"

It was to stop the sudden distraught outpouring, more than anything, that made him bring the belt down twice in fast succession. The Doctor cried out, his voice breaking, while the Master struggled silently to control his own shock. He hadn't truly expected to hear himself listed amongst the fraught apologies, not without prompt. He wasn't entirely sure what to do with it.

Eventually, he forced his hand to open and let the belt drop with a clatter that made the other man jump in dull shock.

"Okay," he muttered, distantly bemused to hear his own voice emerge as a croak. "Okay, you're done."

The Doctor made an incoherent sound of protest that he ignored. He reached out to hover a palm over the damaged flesh, felt heat emanate angrily from the wounds. He gave into the temptation to trail a finger lightly along the length of a welt, earning a shaky moan, before settling his hand more firmly higher on the other man's back. He was sweat-soaked, trembling, his hearts flying wildly. The Master absently rubbed his spine.

He'd been intending to fuck him, when they'd started. Use his mouth, maybe. He'd certainly intended to leave him sprawled like this afterwards, to the private mortification of trying to wriggle himself free of his tangled jacket and trousers.

Instead, despite himself, he got a firm grip on the jacket and used it to carefully lever the Doctor upright, gripping his shoulder as he stood. He was unsteady on his feet, shaking too badly, so the Master kept his weight braced against him as he worked free the knotted twist of the jacket and eased it down the rest of the way, dropping it somewhere behind them. The Doctor watched him blankly all the while. His eyes were heavy-lidded and glazed, a sticky track of dried tears evident on his face. The Master quickly looked away, uncomfortable. He frowned as he debated how best to resolve the next difficulty, before realising there wasn't really any good option.

"Gonna hurt," he murmured in warning, before ducking down to tug the suit trousers back up into place. The Doctor clawed at his shoulder as the material dragged over the wounds, growling a sound of renewed pain. The Master ignored him, considering it an overly generous return of his dignity, all things considered. He straightened, eyeing him warily. "Okay?"

The Doctor blinked at him slowly, looking half-high. He managed a nod. "Yeah. Thanks." His voice was wrecked.

"Feel better, now?"

"Bit. Do you?"

The Master huffed a humourless laugh and opened his mouth to sneer something sarcastic - only to hesitate as it occurred to him that the drums had settled down to something almost tolerable. Surprised, he paused like that for a moment, marveling at the relative inner quiet.

Then, before either of them could say another word that might acknowledge the situation, he turned swiftly on his heel and made for the door. He wondered how fast he could get himself somewhere private for a frantic, vaguely self-deprecating wank.

* * *

They didn't talk about it.

The Master found himself oddly quietened in the indefinite time that drifted by afterwards. The drums were as gentled as they ever were, and for the first time he felt settled in the silent spaces of the ship. He read. Found obscure texts in the TARDIS library from Earth and Atrios and Dramos that he'd never seen before; secreted them away to examine in private. He found an old disused chem lab, spent an evening cataloguing what was left of the stock, marked it as his own for future use. He took a coat and walked out into the empty landscape until the police box was a blue speck behind him and the wind screaming against the rocks was all he could hear, just to feel air that wasn't generated by the dead TARDIS' lingering power stores.

He didn't lay eyes on the Doctor for some time. It wasn't particularly a conscious decision; nothing so mundane as morning-after awkwardness. It wasn't as if there'd been any actual sex to feel awkward about, he thought wryly. But. Something had occurred. Some unexpected exchange of... intimacy he hadn't asked for, and which left him seeking isolation, for a time. It hadn't been like that before, those many lifetimes ago they'd last been together. They'd been adolescents, near enough. Curious and affectionate; nothing of the violence that was in them both now.

Left to his own devices, he also continued his search for means of escape.

He began exploring the ship methodically, mapping it out in his mind. The rooms no longer shifted about since the TARDIS's sentience had dissipated, so it was at least a feasible project. He wasn't sure what he expected to find, exactly. A bank of computers unconnected to the wider systems, maybe; full of encrypted secrets and a nice, neat map straight off the planet. That would have been nice. Even better, the older rooms of the TARDIS were all crammed full of old tech, alien artifacts, forgotten trinkets. It was the detritus of not just the Doctor's many lives, but those of whatever Time Lord had inhabited the stolen ship before him; all of it shoved into back rooms and storage cupboards and abandoned corridors. It would take years to fully catalogue, he estimated, but the sheer number of possibilities assured him there had to be _something_ of use among the mountains of junk. A confiscated vortex manipulator, perhaps. Even a chronodyne generator could be sufficiently altered, if he could just get his hands on one. He was content in the knowledge he would find something suitable eventually.

But the frantic nature of his search had lost its edge. He'd grown distracted, he realised: his attention captured quite effectively by considering the new game presented to him.

Somewhat unexpectedly, he'd been given a glimpse into the Doctor's guarded psyche. Peered into some vulnerable little crack across the surface of his persona, found the wounded things inside. And now he wanted nothing more than to pry it open further, spill out the dark unflattering secrets for his personal perusal. He wanted to dip his fingertips into the inky guilt and vitriol and anger, use it to sign his name as the rightful owner of that knowledge.

He decided there was all the time in the universe to find his way off this wretched planet, as soon as he was ready. But before that, he'd been granted the rare chance to torment his favourite nemesis. It had been so many centuries since the Doctor had stayed still long enough for this kind of scrutiny; the Master didn't intend to waste the opportunity.

* * *

When they did finally cross paths, it was inadvertent. The Master entered the 16th floor kitchen in search of food, only to find the Doctor already there, caught in the act of replicating himself an unrealistically sized bowl of pasta.

They both stilled. Ah. _There_ was the awkwardness.

The Doctor looked every bit the proverbial dear in headlights, all wide eyes and the obvious instinct to run. The Master glanced him over. He was dressed more casually than the usual rumpled suit, likely in deference to his still healing body - and that in itself seemed a source of discomfort, as he quickly looked down at himself and pulled at the hem of his oversized jumper as though aware it had given him away. The loose clothing concealed most of him, but not quite the green-blue bruise lingering around the side of his neck.

The Master blinked at the visceral flash-memory of sinking his teeth there.

He forcefully dismissed it, stepping into the room and moving to stand on the opposite side of the island counter to the Doctor. He leaned his elbows there, then reached across to steal the fork that had been laid out, suddenly feeling absolutely starving. He speared a pasta from the bowl and popped it into his mouth. Wrinkled his nose in immediate distaste.

"What the hell is that?"

"Green pesto and pine nut."

"It's disgusting." He took another large bite, hungry enough that he could ignore the taste.

The Doctor sighed, opening a drawer to retrieve a second fork and moving back to join him at the counter. He picked at the food, and they ate in silence for a few minutes. The Master watched him with furtive glances all the while. He wondered vaguely what the etiquette was - and then decided he didn't care.

"So how's the arse?" he enquired, politely.

The Doctor put down the fork too fast, clattering it against the counter. "Okay then! Well, I have a thing I need to be getting back to -"

"What, I'm not supposed to ask?" He shrugged, waving a piece of pasta in self-defence. "Fine with me, I just assumed you were the type who liked to discuss."

The other Time Lord shot him a withering look, and didn't deign to respond.

The Master ducked his head to hide a grin. Truthfully, _he_ was the one who suddenly found himself with half a dozen questions lining up on his tongue. He ate another mouthful, trying to swallow them back.

"Do you -" It was out before he could stop it, and he paused to rephrase exactly what he wanted to say as the Doctor glared at him resignedly. "You really do think about all of those things still, don't you? Most of them were meaningless, you realise?"

The Doctor didn't need to ask what he meant. He frowned, fussing with the sleeve of his jumper. "They're not meaningless. Not to me."

" _Why_?"

The other man just shook his head, guarded, and didn't attempt to elaborate.

The Master flicked an eyebrow dismissively, returning to his food. They'd eaten most of the bowl - or rather, he had, shoveling up forkfuls of oily green pasta on autopilot as they spoke. It wasn't doing much to hit the spot, truthfully. He was still famished, already wondering what food he wanted next.

"Are you alright?"

He glanced up from where he was hunched over the last of the pasta, catching the Doctor frowning in concern. "Fine. I'm just -"

White light suddenly blinded him, screaming across his vision. He heard something crash and clatter from a distance, felt himself reeling clumsily backwards. The world flickered momentarily from existence around him - he was burning, blazing, hemorrhaging energy into the ether. He gasped with the loss, the shock of it. Then the Doctor grabbed at him, fingers digging into his upper arms and shoulders, utterly undaunted by the wild discharge of electrical energy. The Master clung back just as fiercely, holding onto the physical connection until he felt the attack recede.

They stared at each other in stunned silence, the Doctor's eyes wide and devastated.

"No."

"Sorry." The Master laughed helplessly, unable to do much else. "Still dying, then."


	4. Chapter Four

They ended up back in the same medical room, sitting stiffly in cots opposite each other, the transfusion tubes of medication and blood stretched between them as the Doctor stubbornly poured out his lifeforce for him, yet again. The Master thought it was probably not unlike trying to fill up a sieve.

"We can't just do this indefinitely, you know."

The other man raised an eyebrow. "Why's that?"

"Oh, so you see no problem with this? This seems completely sustainable to you, does it?" The Master shook his head, gesturing incredulously so that the catheter tugged painfully in his arm. He could feel the donated artron energy going to work on his failing body already, stabilising his cellular structure, imparting that sensation of borrowed strength and exhilaration. He wondered how long it would last this time, before the natural course of entropy won out and he resumed dying.

"I don't see why not. You've been fine until now. So we have to repeat the procedure every now and then, what does it matter? I don't mind."

It mattered because the Master felt his metaphorical shackles weigh heavier than ever, dragging at his every movement. Was he supposed to just meekly accept that he was forever tied to the other? Dependent on him for life and health and small liberties, while the Doctor held the debt like a leash? Unacceptable. He thought he'd rather accept the hand he'd been dealt, and let his lingering death take its course, than be kept in thrall like this. He'd told the Doctor that once; it wasn't his fault he hadn't been properly understood.

The other Time Lord apparently mistook his silence for worry, as he leaned slightly towards him, expression utterly earnest. "It'll be fine, I promise. This can work."

The Master shook his head, resigned. "Aren't you done trying to save me yet?"

And the Doctor, looking pale and bruised and drained, smiled softly back at him. "Never."

* * *

The problem was, the Doctor was the only person he'd met even remotely like himself. That was the heart of it. The only other being whose mind moved at the same pace as his own, who saw the universe and all its infinite possibilities the way he did. It wasn't just about being the only Time Lords left, now. It had always been them on the outside, even before, suspended in their own private sphere of understanding. He suspected, deep down, that even the divergence of their moralities was largely semantic. Where the Master opted to control, the Doctor utilised manipulation. Where he prized ownership, the Doctor preferred knowledge. The Master enjoyed being feared, while the Doctor craved admiration. But there was little distinction, in the end results. Ultimately their values matched. They were equally capable.

Of course, that had never meant they moved in synchronicity. Whatever was similar in them too often collided. They'd circled each other endlessly for centuries, pulled by the fascination of a true reflection, only to crash and hurtle apart again if they ventured too close. That had always been the pattern; the metaphysics of them. But now something felt different in their imagined gravity, at least in the Master's mind. Gallifrey, whether they liked it or not, had held them in a kind of orbit. The planet had been a pin in their shared timelines, a focal point, a tether on their wild flight through the stars. Whenever they'd careened violently away from each other, it had always had the weighty pull to bring them back.

And now it was gone, and only they two left. Alone, and possibly the two most powerful opposed forces in the universe: rampant with knowledge and impulse and memory, unchecked by anyone but each other. The gravity that had always before kept them moving in predictable patterns was suddenly gone from existence, and they were in freefall. They'd both been reaching and clawing and clinging ever since, heedless of the proximity damage, uncertain what would happen if they flew apart now with nothing to guide them back.

Not that any of this was particularly conscious thought, however. The Master knew only that he wanted, and hated it, and it didn't stop.

There was nothing more humiliating to him than his desire for the Doctor.

* * *

It was raining.

He'd propped the TARDIS door open so he could watch, lowering himself to sit on the metal grate floor of the threshold. He angled sideways, his back propped against the handrail of the walkway, legs stretched across to the other. A mug of tea rested in his lap, warding off the chill of the weather.

He'd often sat like this whenever he'd piloted his own TARDIS, feet dangling from the open doorway out into the void of space. He'd flown his own ships close to the light of dying stars, edged up against the gravity fields of black holes. He'd wanted to look at them with his own eyes; see if he could find that moment again, when he'd first heard the drumming sound from deep within the Schism. He never had. He stretched out a hand, palm-up, into the rain. The water ran cool down the inside of his wrist.

The vibration of the metal grate underfoot announced the Doctor's presence; they were never able to approach each other unnoticed in this room. He wondered, not for the first time, if it had been purposely designed that way. The other Time Lord stood for a moment nearby, hands shoved in the pockets of his suit jacket as he surveyed the weather, before shooting him a questioning look. The Master shrugged his assent, and watched as the Doctor came to settle on the floor opposite him. He had more difficulty folding into the space, long legs bent slightly at the knees, trainers pressed up against the railing next to the Master's hip.

"Love a good storm."

As far as he could remember, this was the first time since they'd landed here that the Doctor had willingly sought his company. True, he'd never turned him away whenever the Master had descended on him, interrupting his reading or eating or whatever unspeakably boring activity he'd been in the middle of - not immediately, at least; not until something too cutting, too full of anger had been said by one or both of them. But he'd never come looking for him either, not without reason. Now he was practically hovering.

"What's wrong?"

The Doctor blinked at him in apparent surprise, shook his head. "Nothing. That I know of?"

"Really. So you definitely haven't come to check I'm not about to expire on the spot in a dramatic flash of lightning?"

The other man frowned. "You say that like it's such a bad thing."

It had been, by his increasingly rough estimate, a week since the last transfusion had healed him. The Master felt well enough, perfectly functional and clear-headed once again - but somewhere at the core of him, he thought he could sense it now: the fatal tear in his being that would inevitably start to unravel if left unrepaired. He felt it like an anaesthetised wound, lacking the warning signal of pain but no less debilitating. It left him weaker, further debased by yet another flaw.

"Well I'm fine," he lied waspishly. "Stop checking." He returned his attention to outside, and they were quiet as minutes drifted by in relative peace. He held his drink cupped between both hands so that the heat sank into his palms, one finger quietly tapping out the familiar beat of four against the handle.

"What's it like?"

He looked over to find the other Time Lord watching him with an openly studious expression, brows drawn in curiosity and eyes fixed on the Master's hands. It wasn't difficult to guess what he was referring to.

"I think that's the first time you've ever asked me that." And they had over nine hundred years' history of asking each other pointless, impertinent, invasive questions. Almost against his will, the Master's mind flashed to that moment in the junkyard - that wild moment of vicious ecstasy - when he had finally, _finally_ heard the Doctor admit, aloud, that the drums were real and not just a manifestation of his insanity. Until then it had been difficult to stay completely convinced himself. He'd laughed because he hadn't known what else to do with the furious vindication that had slammed into him.

The Doctor's face scrunched self-deprecatingly, and he returned his attention to the grey landscape. "Sorry. You don't have to answer. I just wondered."

The Master frowned at him dubiously, unsure if he should be affronted or not. There really wasn't much precedent for someone asking details of his damaged mind; he couldn't recall speaking about it at any length since he was a child, trying to explain to bewildered parents with words he didn't have yet that the Schism had marked him. No one had believed it to be real, they certainly hadn't been interested in encouraging his fantasies by asking more questions. He sipped his tea, deliberating on his response.

"It's not bad all the time," he admitted eventually. He kept his eyes on the rain, refusing to check if the Doctor was looking at him again, or what his expression might be now. "It never stops, but I can ignore it if it stays quiet."

"Like now?" the other man ventured, when he paused a while.

"Yes, did my aura of serenity give it away?"

The Doctor considered this for a while. "What happens that makes it get worse? Or is it random?"

The Master had never been much for self-analysis, but even he had noticed a few common threads of causality over the centuries. He shrugged. "Stress, anger. Boredom. All somewhat key elements of my personality, you might notice."

The Doctor snorted softly, but not without sympathy. "Makes sense. It's primarily a psychic broadcast, must come through stronger when you let your mental guards down."

"Yes, well I know that _now_. Thank you for your fascinating insights, they would have been greatly appreciated a few hundred years ago."

The other man winced slightly.

The Master bit his tongue. He hadn't particularly intended to be quite so snide, but the sheer unfamiliarity of admitting any of this - of talking about it like it was factual and _real_ \- was making him defensive. He was half-braced for a well meaning dismissal at any moment; had to keep reminding himself that there was proof and an explanation now, that the Doctor had _been_ there to hear exactly what had been done to him, and couldn't possibly insist it was just in his head anymore.

"I could try and help, if you want?" The Doctor hitched a shoulder. "I don't know, see if there's any way to shut it down or run interference?"

The Master let out a bitter, heavy breath. "You really can't help yourself, can you?"

"What? I thought -"

"I don't need you to _fix me_. I never did." He shot a look across at him, direct and demanding. "Why did you stay here?"

"What?"

"Here, on this planet. If it was just about forcing me to 'behave', you could have brought me here and left."

The Doctor looked honestly confused. "You were sick. You'd have died if I hadn't stayed."

"Alright, well you could have treated me first. Set me up with a few supplies if you were that worried, come back to check on me every few decades. But _you_ could have left." He aimed a pointed look at the other Time Lord, which was deftly avoided. "Not quite the gravitas or finality of crashing us here and ripping out the heart of your TARDIS, I admit, but surely more practical."

"I promised I'd help you."

"Helping is one thing. Trapping yourself in my tailor-made purgatory is another."

The Doctor shifted, looking uncomfortable. "Who said it was only just for you?"

He smiled insincerely at that, unsurprised. "Course, sorry. Should have known better than to think you'd do anything solely for my benefit. This is about your guilt complex again, isn't it?"

The Doctor didn't bother confirming. He hardly needed to.

"So go on, what are our sentences?"

"Sentences?"

The Master held out his hands as though balancing the question. "If this is our joint 'time out' from the universe. Well, on the one hand, we're both genocidaires. I think we can agree I'm probably the more successful in that department. Although to be fair, I suppose you were more ambitious." He smirked as the Doctor blanched, continued on before he could interrupt. "You've messed with more timelines than me, apparently. I've definitely killed more people than you - although it is _not_ the hands-down competition you'd have people think, don't think I don't know. Let's see, what else?"

"Can we please not do this...?"

"You're a war criminal, I'm a deserter. Both tried our hands at torture, haven't we? I'm technically a corrupt politician, if that counts for anything. Don't suppose it does, really... Oh! You're a thief! Nearly forgot that one."

"Will you stop?"

"What? I'm just trying to weigh up our respective crimes and sentences, since you've decided we're doing honest time for them."

The Doctor shook his head helplessly. "That's not... I haven't..."

"Oh come on, don't tell me you haven't got this worked out down to our exact parole years? Not good enough, Doctor, I want a number on it."

"I already said -"

"On balance, your stuff is probably worth a bit less. And you've got the whole repentance thing down to an art, these days - could justify early release. Me, not so much. So, shave a few hundred years off your stay, what does that leave -"

" _Stop_."

They stared at each other, tension high. The Doctor was leaning forward in his sudden fervency, one leg bent so that his sharp knee jabbed into the Master's shin. He eased back slowly, swiping a hand through his chaotic hair.

"Just stop, okay? Is that - is that what you think I'll do?"

He rolled his eyes out at the grey rainfall. "You're deflecting."

"So are you. You think I'm going to - what - get _impatient_ and leave you here once I've stayed long enough to make myself feel better?"

The Master didn't bother dignifying that with a response, keeping his eyes focused on the wet landscape. He wasn't even quite sure what they were arguing about anymore. He turned the mug of tea round in his hands, ignored when one of the Doctor's fingers barely grazed his ankle.

"Hey. Look at me. That's not what this is."

He rolled his head on his shoulders to pin the other man with a glare. "I don't care. Just wanted to know what I could expect."

The Doctor watched him, eyebrows pulled together in infuriating sympathy. "I'm not planning on leaving. I've told you that."

"Doesn't get you brownie points when you've got no way you _can_ leave, come to think of it."

"No. No, I mean I _wouldn't_. I won't." The Doctor shrugged, casting about ineffectually for a moment, hands open in his lap. "This is it, for both of us. I chose this. I chose to stay. I'm not going anywhere."

"You've never stayed anywhere in your damn lives!"

"Well I am now!"

The Master clenched his jaw, snatched his gaze away. "Then you're somehow even stupider than I ever gave you credit for. Amazing."

They were quiet for a while, the only sound the monotonous patter of rain. It was getting heavier, splashing over the threshold and wetting one of his shirtsleeves. He sipped at his tea, forcefully trying to recall his previous sense of calm.

"Look. I'm not saying any of this the right way," the Doctor sighed eventually, scrubbing a hand down his face. "I honestly didn't mean it like that, that you need to be 'fixed', only - only that I'd like to help, if you ever need it. That's all. And I meant everything else I said as well, while we're at it."

"About what?"

The other man shifted uncomfortably, forcing himself to make eye contact like it pained him. "When I said sorry. That I left, the first time, the way I did." He cleared his throat, wincing again. "I really am."

The Master stared at him, perplexed. He wasn't quite sure what to react to first - the reference to their shared past, or the reference to an apology made while the Master had taken a strap to him. Neither was something comfortably acknowledged. He raised his eyebrows while he considered, trying to formulate a suitably cutting response and coming up short.

The Doctor seemed to take his silence as invitation to continue, visibly growing more flustered as he did so. "It's just. I know that how I said it, you might have thought it was, uhm. In the heat of the moment, or something. And it wasn't. I mean, it was but I would have said it anyway. So we're clear."

"...As crystal."

"And, also, I'm sorry about... you know..." The Doctor closed his eyes, visibly mortified. "What happened. I shouldn't have asked you to... do that for me."

Feeling utterly lost by the twist in conversation, the Master scoffed disbelief. "Oh, come on. Let's not pretend this is some solitary, puritan retreat for you. That's why we're _really_ here, right?" He grinned slowly, showing his teeth. "Get me all on my lonesome, see what depravity we can get up to without those pesky witnesses. No damage to your saintly reputation, this way. What happens on an abandoned, irradiated planet stays on -"

"No!" The Doctor looked about as horrified and scandalised as he'd been expecting. He really did make it too easy, sometimes. "I wasn't thinking that at all. I didn't even mean to - I wasn't expecting -"

The Master snapped a look over at him. "Now that _is_ a lie."

The other Time Lord floundered for a moment, mouth still open in protest. Then he snapped it closed, a muscle clenching in his jaw. "Not like you mean, not like _that_. I expected you to be angry, yeah. I knew you'd blame me."

"And, what? You were just going to stand there and take it?"

He hesitated, offered a defensive shrug. "Up to a point."

"Part of your _penance_." The Master sneered, incredulous. A question occurred to him. "Did you know you'd get off on it?"

The Doctor looked over at him in surprise, then quickly away again. Colour was creeping across his skin with embarrassment and most likely more endless guilt. "...No. Not really."

Watching the other man's obvious struggle, it took conscious effort to remain still and composed. "So go on then, what exactly is it that does it for you?" he prompted, half mocking and half genuinely curious. "Being hurt? Being made to do what you're told, for once? Or that it's me, doing the telling?"

The Doctor twitched, then grabbed for the railing behind him as he started to stand. "Look, I said I'm sorry, I promise it won't happen again -"

"Stay."

It wasn't a particularly loud instruction, but he put just enough command into it that it achieved the desired result: the other man promptly froze, caught in his awkward half-crouch and watching the Master with wide, hunted eyes.

"Answer the question."

The Doctor swallowed, not moving. "All," he said eventually, voice low. "All of those things."

Pleased, the Master nodded. With slow, precise movements, he set aside his mug of tea and smoothed a steady hand down the front of his waistcoat. Rising interest sped his heartsbeat, but he'd be damned before he let it show so easily. He glanced over, arched an expectant eyebrow.

The Doctor dropped quickly from his crouch, knees hitting the metal grating.

"Come here."

Looking slightly wild around the eyes, like he couldn't quite believe this was somehow happening again, the Doctor nevertheless hurried to comply. He shuffled nearer until he was at the Master's side, and then wavered, seemingly unsure of what he was supposed to do.

The Master shifted to sit up straighter, parting and stretching his legs in front of him. He inclined his head in wordless instruction, smirking at the immediate look of embarrassed reluctance that came over the other man. They stared at each other in silent competition. At last the Doctor let out a sigh. He hesitated a final few seconds, and then clambered awkwardly into the Master's lap to straddle him. He was all long, inelegant limbs and furiously bristling dignity, his face the picture of mortification. The Master grinned, thoroughly enjoying the sight.

"Oh, don't give me that look. You're the one who wants to do 'penance'. Best done on your knees, I think."

The Doctor coloured further, averting his eyes. The Master shifted under the weight of him, pulling at his hips to reposition him where he wanted. The Doctor's hands landed on his shoulders for balance, then let go to grip the railing behind him instead. He kept lifting himself on his knees, reluctant to settle comfortably, as though he could somehow keep some semblance of distance between them. The Master tipped his head back, making a show of his indulgent examination. He ran his palms up the spread thighs, pressed his thumbs against hipbones; savouring the sensation of contact he hadn't really gotten to experience last time. He tugged critically at the shirt tucked into his belt.

"Take this off."

The Doctor's mouth thinned with tension, evidently conducting some inner debate. Then he leaned back, shrugging the suit jacket from his shoulders and discarding it to one side. Long fingers rose to pull loose the knot of his tie, sliding it free of his shirt collar and dropping it beside them. Finally the buttons of his shirt, quick and efficient. The Master made no move to help, rather enjoying the oddly practical stripshow. He watched intently as the Doctor finished opening it, dragged it roughly free of his belt, and pulled it down his arms with about as much sensuality as if he were getting changed for bed. Instruction having been followed to the letter, he resumed sitting motionless, his expression neutral.

The Master took the opportunity to study him. He hadn't had the chance at this, either, the last time they'd done... whatever it was they were doing here. Hadn't looked on him like this for over eight hundred years, in fact. They were different creatures, now, to the boys who'd kissed in dormitory rooms. He trailed his eyes over the pale skin, the dusting of dark hair, the shadowed jut of clavicles. He looked oddly fragile, in this regeneration. _Breakable_. Goosebumps had immediately come up all over in the chill from the open door, and the Master entertained himself a moment tracing his fingertips down the back of his arm to feel the texture of them, across to his waist and lower back. He pulled at him, insisting he sit properly, at the same time bending his own knees so that the Doctor slid more firmly into his lap. He sucked a satisfied breath as the weight of him settled against his growing erection, and the Doctor's own hardness promptly nudged up against his stomach.

"Hm. I forgot how easy you were."

Dark eyes flashed in annoyance. "Pot calling the kettle, don't you think?"

The Master ignored him, busy running the back of two fingers down the line of the Doctor's flat stomach, fascinated by the shiver it caused. This was the vulnerable spot on any animal, soft and unprotected, and he thrilled at the way the other man went tense in response. He felt for the heartbeats; pressed his fingertips into the grooves between ribs; his thumb into the hollow navel. The Doctor twitched as though he wanted to protest the exploration, but kept himself quiet. His breath was starting to come noticeably faster, pulse stuttering with nerves and arousal. His gaze kept meeting the Master's and then skittering away again, and he half-flinched at every new movement, clearly trying to anticipate where the first flash of pain would come from.

The Master glanced down between them. Carefully, he palmed at the hardness between the other man's legs, pressing with the heel of his hand until he earned a gasp.

"I'm not going to let you come, you know."

The Doctor swallowed, and then nodded once in understanding.

Even so the Master continued to stroke him through the material, pleased when his hips eventually rocked forward involuntarily. The good Doctor, usually so superior in his self-control, squirming in his lap for any touch he could get. Quiet hitching breaths escaped him. His hands came up to curl tight in the Master's lapels and he swayed forward until their foreheads touched. In his excitement there was a frisson of attempted psychic connection, but the Master shut it down easily enough, unnoticed. He watched the Doctor's face instead; parted his lips so he could feel the desperate little gasps that tumbled down into his own mouth. His free hand closed around the back of the other man's neck, possessive and forceful, keeping him in place as he rocked.

When he stopped stroking, the Doctor whined a protest before he could stop himself. He was breathing hard, his pupils blown wide and dazed as he blinked his eyes open. The Master glanced down at his mouth - felt the surprising urge to kiss him.

He turned his face away and sunk his teeth into the curve of a bare shoulder instead, in unexplained punishment. The Doctor yelped, his hands flying to the Master's hair as though to pull him away, but effectively only clutching him in place. His hips rocked forward, whole upper body arching further against him in reaction, until the Master growled a muffled sound of desperation into his skin and surged upwards. He moved so suddenly that the Doctor fell backwards in an ungainly sprawl of limbs as the Master struggled to his feet. For a second, a stark expression flashed across his face - disappointment; betrayal maybe - then retreated as his gaze flicked down to where the Master was hurriedly, clumsily fighting to open his belt buckle. His eyes widened, mouth parting in realisation.

The Master didn't want him to think about it, he wanted him to obey. He snapped his fingers, beckoning impatiently with his free hand. "Get up, come here."

The Doctor scrambled until he was kneeling upright again, and then shuffled closer until he was right at the Master's feet. He darted a glance upwards, tentatively put a hand on the Master's thigh to steady himself.

He almost groaned at the sight, had to bite back the sound behind clenched teeth. As it was, he could barely stop his fingers from shaking as he fumbled his button and fly open, roughly dragging at trousers and underwear until he could get one hand round his achingly hard cock. A hiss escaped him as the Doctor automatically licked his lip, eyes wide and fixed on him, waiting.

"You're so sorry. Prove it, then. Show me how much."

The Doctor stared up at him, momentarily inscrutable. He looked like he was deliberating again. Then he slid his hand carefully over the Master's, nudging him aside as he took hold of his cock. The Master had just enough time to wonder dazedly if he'd ever done this for anyone else, and then the thought evaporated as the Doctor calmly leaned forward and took him into his mouth.

" _Fuck_." It shocked him, a bit. Not just the sudden sparking of stimulated nerve-endings, but the sight, the _concept_ of it: the Doctor's submission, physical and visceral. He dipped his head further, sliding the Master's cock over his tongue, the roof of his mouth, before pulling back with a quick, quiet sound low in his throat. The Master stared, appalled by the strength of his own reaction.

He brought a hand to the Doctor's hair, slid his fingers through the strands until he could nudge at the back of his head, encouraging him to move again. He did, sinking forward to swallow the Master in wet heat. His hand moved along the length of him as well, adjusting grip and rhythm periodically, eyes closed in concentration. The Master almost huffed a laugh, realising the Doctor was experimenting; testing his reactions to find the optimal technique. Of course he was. The Master widened his stance, reaching back to grab the railing to steady himself. His other hand clenched tighter in the Doctor's dark hair, dragging him closer so that his cock pressed hard against the back of his throat. He promptly gagged, pushing instinctively at him and jerking back with a gasp.

The Master allowed it but kept his grip in his hair, using it to tip his head backwards instead. The Doctor was panting, mouth open and slick, reactionary tears in the corners of his eyes. He clung to the Master's wrist for balance as he was arched back. The tenting in his trousers was more obvious than ever, a damp spot of leaking arousal starting to darken the material.

"Rude. Say sorry."

The Doctor let out an indignant breath instead, and stayed silent.

The Master gave a narrow smile. "Go on. You have so many apologies to make up for. Start here."

A muscle in his jaw worked, and he looked away in embarrassment, swallowing. "...Sorry. I'll do better."

The Master laughed delightedly, charmed. His thumb stroked the space behind the Doctor's ear in brief praise. "Good. Put your hands behind your back." He wished he'd had the forethought to tie them there with something. "And don't move them again."

Dark eyes flashed up to him, bright with barely suppressed challenge. The Master watched, fascinated. This was quickly becoming his favourite part: the knife-edge; the tension between the Doctor's pride and whatever it was in him that made this desirable. It was this moment that made it so sweet every time he gave in.

Eventually, he shifted himself for better balance and moved slowly to clasp his hands behind him, shoulders high with tension. The Master bit his lip to cover a smile. He adjusted his grip in the man's hair, used it to carefully pull him closer again, holding his breath as the Doctor obligingly opened his mouth for his cock. As he pressed inside, it was the Doctor that made the sound of bitten-off satisfaction. The Master closed his eyes, luxuriating in the slick slide of pleasure.

Then he pushed insistently forward again, slow enough that he could feel the moment the Doctor choked with the Master's cock seated at the back of his throat. He watched, enraptured, as the Doctor flinched and struggled to hold him there, gagging. A tear leaked from the corner of his eye, and the Master wiped it reverently with the pad of his thumb, down over the hollow of his stretched cheek. He was buried deep enough that it had to be near impossible for the other man to draw a breath, but he didn't attempt to pull away this time, or free his hands. The Master slid his hand round to the back of the Doctor's neck and began to rock his hips minutely, in and out; not enough to let him steal a breath, but enough to make the Master suddenly lose his own composure in a rush of sensation.

" _God_ , you really do have a smart mouth." He released a breathless laugh that ended in a groan, as he buried himself in the wet heat as far as he could manage. The Doctor jerked, his fists closing determinedly behind his back, throat convulsing around him. His brows were drawn in concentration, eyes closed tight at the effort. The Master held him there for long seconds, twitching his hips forward to hear the quiet, hitching coughs of discomfort that said he purposely hadn't engaged respiratory bypass. There was something sinfully indulgent in pleasuring himself without reciprocating. The idea of the Doctor consenting to be used, enduring the use without protest. The Master thrilled at it, delighted at the feeling of utter control.

Finally, he pulled back enough that the other man could gasp a relieved breath. He allowed the Doctor to bob his head a few times, tongue working enthusiastically along the length of his cock, before thrusting hard into his mouth again and relishing the slightly undignified gurgle in response. The Master tilted his head back, starting to move his hips in earnest, listening to the vaguely filthy wet sounds as he raced all too soon towards finishing.

It didn't last long, all told. He couldn't help it. He came with a gasped curse, spilling himself into the other man's mouth. The Doctor choked and quickly swallowed. His hands unclasped from behind his back, coming up to cling to the Master's belt and shirt, dragging him closer as he shuddered through his orgasm, as though eager not to spill a drop. The Master grabbed at his hair, his shoulders, curling forward over him with a helpless sound of pleasure.

At last the blinding intensity faded somewhat and he managed to straighten, breathing hard, hand shaking as he gripped the railing for support. The Doctor didn't quite relent in sucking him clean, until the Master made a half-indulgent, half-protesting noise and pushed at him. He eased off, pressing his face quickly to the Master's stomach as though hiding, breath gusting hot and quick against the fabric of his shirt. Caught off guard, the Master settled his hand briefly on the back of his head, feeling the tremor of need and adrenaline that ran through him. He let go quickly, though, urging him further away. The Doctor reluctantly settled back on his knees.

He looked thoroughly, deliciously defiled.

His mouth was bruised red and swollen, slightly open as he fought to catch his breath, and he used the back of his hand to wipe at the mix of saliva and semen across his chin. His hair stuck up in every which direction from being pulled, and he kept flicking embarrassed glances up through wet lashes. His fingers dug into the tops of his thighs, in an obvious effort not to touch the erection that strained against the confines of his trousers. The Master stared openly, working to preserve the sight in memory. It felt special. He imagined this wasn't at all something for the harem of Earth girls: their heroic Doctor, brought low by desperate request, begging to be hurt. This was for the Master's eyes alone.

Eventually remembering himself, he reached down to put himself away, tugging clothes back into place with perfunctory movements. He ran his fingers back through his blond hair, straightened his tie. The Doctor watched him cautiously all the while. Feeling slightly more in control of himself, the Master slowly crouched down so they were at eye level.

"You were good. Did you enjoy yourself?"

The Doctor looked away, eyes flickering closed tellingly.

"That much? I'm flattered. Do you want to come?"

"Thought you said I couldn't."

The Master studied him as though in consideration - and then flashed a sharp-edged grin. "Maybe when I actually believe you're sorry I'll reconsider." And with that he darted forward to press a hard, aggressive kiss to the other man's forehead, before rising to his feet and walking away without a backward glance, footsteps shuddering the metal grating.


	5. Chapter Five

"Your 'six-billion-strong swarm' plan was ridiculous, by the way," the Doctor commented scathingly, apropos of nothing. He was busy glaring at the game pieces, and the Master suspected he was just smarting about his impending defeat.

"Was not. It worked, didn't it?"

The other man scoffed exaggeratedly. "For a given value of 'worked', I suppose..." He uncrossed his arms, reached out to hover a hand indecisively over the boards, before evidently changing his mind and snatching it back with a deepening scowl. The wind gusted past, briefly flattening his fringe and making him squint. "You'd have absolutely _hated_ it once all the excitement had died down."

"I successfully took over the Earth!"

"Yeah, and left no one to actually play lord and master to," the Doctor pointed out, not unreasonably. "Thought that was your favourite part."

He rubbed at the stubble over his jaw thoughtfully. "There was you," he said at length, arguing the point without any real heat. "And your two pet humans."

The Doctor snorted. "Honestly, I'd have almost enjoyed seeing you try to bully Donna. Would have made the whole disaster worth it."

"Ah yes, your charming weakness for feisty women. Haven't missed that."

He was silent a moment, then quickly snatched up a pawn and moved it forward. "Anyway, I somehow doubt the three of us would have occupied six billion of you for very long. I'd have given it thirty minutes of successful world domination before the in-fighting started and most of your clones started staging coups."

Sadly, he found he couldn't quite find a decent counterpoint to that. Although, to be fair to himself, it had been one of his more spontaneous, improvised efforts - _and_ he'd been a bit distracted by starvation and continuously dying, at the time. You couldn't expect perfection.

He leaned forward, studying the precariously stacked tiers of the board for a few moments, and then calmly moved his bishop up from the second level to the third. "Checkmate."

"Oh, for -! That doesn't even- You're just making this up as you go, now."

"We can go back to normal chess if this is too hard?"

"It's not a real game!"

"Don't be such a sore loser."

"You got it from an ancient telly show and it _doesn't make sense_!"

The Master slid down in his chair to try and conceal a grin behind the stacked chess boards, privately amazed this had played out as far as it had, but by now completely committed.

The Doctor regarded him sulkily over folded arms, utterly nonplussed.

They'd dragged two chairs, a table and the chessboards out into the fresh, chill air outside the TARDIS, for the sake of the slightest change in scenery. The Master tipped his head back, laughingly turning his eyes up to the sky. It was clear at the moment, and he could see a distant moon orbiting somewhere above them.

"Did you ever think about it, at all?" the Doctor asked, curiously following his gaze overhead. "Us, travelling together?"

He turned his attention back and raised his eyebrows, surprised. "Was there any point? You weren't really asking."

"Course I was!" The other Time Lord smiled at him, a little sadly, over the top of the layered chessboards. "I would have taken you anywhere you wanted to go."

The Master inclined his head, feeling fleetingly indulgent. "Oh?" He thought about it for a moment. "We could have gone to SaTryn, seen the glass spires."

"Really? Not what I was expecting. Since when did you rate art?"

"Hey, I have culture. I like nice things." He stretched in his chair, the heels of his shoes scuffing through the rocky dirt and one ankle knocking against the other man's. "I once commissioned the seven finest artists in the Nesriin galaxy to construct monuments for my coronation, on Aluna. They repurposed a lot of the rubble, actually. Very thematic. I appreciated the ingenuity."

The Doctor kicked him under the table. "That definitely doesn't count."

"Go on, then, where would you have picked?"

The other Time Lord swiped up one of the black chess pieces, spun it absently between two long fingers as he thought. "We used to talk about going to see the Solar Temples. Remember? Never did get round to it."

"No. Neither did I. Turns out I'm not one for organised religion. Who'd have guessed."

The Doctor suddenly flashed a grin, bright and charming and conspiratorial. "I think I'd have taken you slumming."

"Excuse me?"

"Somewhere you couldn't play flash bastard." He waved an accusing finger at the Master's customary sleek suit. Then, clearly warming further to the idea, leaned eagerly forward. "Somewhere absolutely filthy. Packed with people. Busy, loud, you name it. The New World Markets, maybe. Complete chaos, it's _brilliant_."

"... _Why_?"

"Some of the best days I've ever had have been in places like that." He looked down at the chess piece in his hands, turning it over and over.

The Master said nothing, watching him astutely. Unbidden, he wondered what it had been like: to be so alone in the universe that there was comfort to be found in the indiscriminate crush of lesser lifeforms.

If the Doctor understood his scrutiny, he pointedly ignored it, instead looking up with a mischievous expression. "We could have got fish and chips. Wrapped in scrap paper. Eaten it with our _hands_."

"Well that's just obscene." He made a show of turning his nose up, sniffing delicately, playing to the role he knew was expected.

The Doctor laughed, pleased. "You _like_ obscene."

He could only concede that, he supposed.

The wind picked up, ruffling the Master's hair and sending a shiver down the back of his collar. He leaned back in his chair, elbows braced on the arms and fingers laced in front of him.

"Alright. Fish and chips it is. You can take me next time we're in the area."

The Doctor smiled softly, and didn't correct him.

"Play again?"

"...Yeah, go on."

It wasn't as if they had anywhere more important to be.

* * *

The thing was, he'd never quite decided on another bedroom beside the clinically bare recovery room he'd first woken up in. He slept there when he needed to, in short stays, and never lingered otherwise. It was functional, but exacerbated the sounds in his head with its sterile silences. He hated it with unbecoming fury.

Nor did he particularly want to choose other rooms of his own, however. That was far too like admitting he lived here now.

Which is how and why he found himself standing in his pyjamas pants in the shadowed threshold of the Doctor's bedroom, having hacked through the childish security lock with minimal effort, watching the sleeping figure with narrowed eyes. He lingered where he was, reluctant to wake the other Time Lord, particularly before he'd thought of a decent excuse for his being here.

He blamed the sex. There was something about an orgasm coaxed by another person that created a sickening, artificial sense of connection. He quite resented it.

Eventually, he braved a slow step into the room, sweeping a studious glance around him. It was chaos, as he could have anticipated. There was junk everywhere. He thought there was a couch over against one wall, but it was too buried beneath a mountain of books, papers, diagrams, and handwritten notes for him to be sure. There was mechanical detritus littered about the floor, devices that had been pulled apart and strewn about and half put back together before being abandoned. He nudged at a little pile of wires with his bare foot as he passed. Pieces of the Doctor's suit were scattered about the room, draped over various bits of furniture. He came to stand at the foot of the bed, reached down and picked up the cheap red tie that had been discarded across the quilt, running it through his hands.

He wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep _here_. He sneered at himself, but it did nothing to change the fact.

The Doctor stirred, his questionable sense of self-preservation finally rousing enough to alert him to another presence in the room. His eyes opened in the dark, catching the dim light from the doorway. The Master held still as they blinked up at him, intrigued to witness what the reaction would be. For long seconds they both just stared at each other. Speaking seemed unnecessary and surplus.

Finally, grunting sleepily, the Doctor shoved himself over to one side of the bed, clearing a space. Then he rolled over onto his side, turning his back and leaving the invitation unspoken.

The Master let the tie drop, moving to perch gingerly on the edge of the mattress. There was a little table on this side of the bed, covered in yet more clutter. He studied it disinterestedly. A clock marked with fourteen hours and a paperback copy of _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ , dogeared and tea-stained. Three short stacks of coins from five different planets and at least two time periods. A loose playing card from a deck he didn't recognise, a blue keychain, a ball of string. Even a broken data card, of all things; the pieces gathered together in a neat pile. He shook his head at the sight, both long-familiar with and exasperated by the magpie tendencies.

Stiffly, he eased himself further onto the bed, tucking his legs under the covers and leaning back against the headboard, arms folded tight across his bare chest. The sheets were already warm beneath him from where the Doctor had been lying, and that same heat radiated conspicuously from his left. The Master's heartsbeat had sped irrationally, betraying his discomfort and making him feel restless enough that sleep suddenly seemed even more impossible here than it had before, alone with the din of the drums. He thought later that he must have sat like that for an hour or more, staring into the corners of the darkened room, mind drifting aimlessly. He spent most of the time remembering the other man's mouth on him, the noises he'd made; imagining what else he might be made or willing to do.

The Doctor slept soundly next to him throughout, his breathing slow and steady and untroubled. An awful, obscene display of trust that made the Master's guts twist if he looked at it too closely.

Eventually, when his eyes at last grew heavy, he slid down into the sheets so he could lie along the very edge of the bed at a careful distance, his back turned. Sleep was slow in coming; shallow and fitful when it finally did settle over him. He dreamed in brief, broken images that never quite coalesced, and was tense enough that he didn't move from position even while unconscious. When he drifted halfway into waking a few hours later, it barely differentiated from his restless sleep state - then a ghost of movement against his spine made him freeze. He kept still, but something must have given him away as having woken, as the Doctor slowly pulled back the fingertips that had been resting against his back.

"...Sorry. Go back to sleep."

The Master said nothing, eyes wide open and curious in the dark. He instinctively cast his awareness outwards, but the other man was as psychically locked down as ever. Still, neither of them quite moved away. At some point during the night they must have migrated closer until the Doctor was a length of heat curled at his back, the scant space between them charged with something like potential. Every time he exhaled, the air shivered intimate and invasive down the length of the Master's spine.

"Can't," he responded at last, truthfully.

"The drums?"

"Yeah." A lie.

The Doctor was quiet a while, before finally braving a whispered, "Can I help?" The breath of it grazed his skin.

The Master swallowed, realising he didn't have an answer to the unfamiliar question. "I don't know." He shifted, slowly twisting against the sheets so he could turn over to face the other man.

The Doctor drew back just enough to give him space, but didn't go far. Their knees nudged together as they resettled, watching each other intently in the dark. The Master thought suddenly about pushing closer. He thought about putting his hands on the Doctor's ridiculous cotton pyjamas and pressing him down into the sheets; settling himself between his legs and feeling the other man twist beneath him; listening to those needy gasps in his ear as the Master took his pleasure. His hand curled against the mattress as he imagined it, fighting to keep himself still. The Doctor glanced down at the movement, then returned his steady gaze to the Master's, looking entirely too aware of the turn his mind had taken.

"...Would that help?"

"No."

The Master closed his eyes and inhaled, forcing the moment to pass. He wondered again why he was here, why he'd wanted to be here. They lapsed into silence for a while, although sleep felt a very distant concept now.

At length, the Doctor inched carefully towards him and lifted a hand, raising it to the Master's face and hovering there without making contact. "Can I?"

He'd thought for a moment it was meant as some insipid gesture of affection, a hand on his cheek in an attempt at intimacy - but at the request for permission he realised the real intent. Immediately, he jerked back across the pillow out of reach. " _Don't_." His hearts thudded in his chest, muscles tensing along the length of his spine.

The Doctor quickly showed his palm in surrender, lowering the hand to rest between them instead. "Okay. Sorry. You wanted me to hear them before. Just thought..."

Unaccountably shaken, the Master glared across the expanse of bed. The Doctor had wanted inside his _head_ ; had wanted to hear the drums like he had a right to them, like he could possibly stand them. He relaxed only gradually, as it became apparent that no further attempts on his mental barriers would be forthcoming.

Realising his silence had gone on too long, he huffed and twitched an eyebrow. "Careful. Don't want it catching, do we."

He'd meant it as a throwaway joke, a whispered dismissal of the strength of his own reaction, but to his eternal consternation the Doctor frowned curiously. "What does that mean?"

The Master shook his head against the pillows, letting his eyes drift closed so he didn't have to see the concerned expression. "You heard our esteemed president," he murmured. "I'm _diseased_. Best keep your distance."

The Doctor brought up his arm, propping himself up on one elbow and leaning his head in his hand. His hair was completely flat on one side, wild on the other. "You know that's not true."

"Please. We both know I'm a bit -" He twirled one finger lazily in the space between them, gave a soft whistle. "Don't pretend."

"Oh, I'm not pretending anything. You're completely demented."

That startled a laugh from the Master, and he opened one eye to see the other man watching him with a faint quirk on his mouth.

"But that's its own issue. They're _wrong_. They did it to you, you're not diseased." His lip curled on the word, as though it tasted unpleasant. "You're brilliant, and they knew it."

The Master raised a sceptical eyebrow, if only to conceal his surprise at the statement. "You do realise you've already got me in bed? You can turn down the charm now."

The Doctor flashed a pleased, boyish grin, before returning to a more serious expression. "I mean it. You said they brought you back during the War. They needed you."

"Ah yes, my indentured servitude. The price of brilliance."

The other man regarded him solemnly for a moment. "I'm sorry. What did they make you do?"

Restless, the Master rolled over onto his stomach, shoving one arm under the pillow and pulling it towards him. He had no idea how they'd meandered onto this topic, or why he was indulging it with answers. There was something quite unreal about sharing space and secrets in the night. As though it didn't really count.

Eyes closed, he lifted a shoulder. "Ideas. Weapons schematics, mostly. They wanted me involved in actual engineering, but I killed twelve Time Lords and myself in a lab 'accident' pretty early on, so they decided design was more practical."

The Doctor didn't say anything else for a few minutes, and the Master slid back towards dozing, only to twitch awake with a little jolt when he did speak.

"I didn't know you were alive. The Council never said anything about bringing you back, or you working for them. I never knew."

" _What_ , they didn't trumpet my glorious innovations in torture and genocide from the mountaintops?! I'm wounded." He smiled humourlessly, remembering. "I got out before the real fireworks. Last I heard, you were busy playing war hero, trying to rally a charge towards The Cruciform. Sorry for not joining. I had a prior appointment, oh, literally _anywhere_ else."

"I'm glad you didn't," came the quick, sincere response, barely above a whisper. "I don't think I could have... finished it. If I'd known you were there, I mean."

The Master blinked his eyes open. He shot a disbelieving glance at the other Time Lord, but the hunted look on the man's face made him think the Doctor somehow actually believed that. Surprised, he silently considered the idea that his presence might have changed the outcome of a war, the fate of a planet; he held it in his mind for a few seconds like a jewel, turning it over languidly to see the facets. Then he discarded it: the cheap glass tat of could-have-beens.

"What did it feel like? Ending Gallifrey."

The Doctor flinched, turning a hurt look on him. "You've asked me that before."

"I want to know."

"Horrible."

"No, you felt horrible _afterwards_. But the moment, the actual _moment_ you did it - what did that feel like? Tell me."

The other man stared down at him warily, hesitating over whatever answer lingered between them. "I don't know. It felt... final. Quiet. Still. There wasn't. I didn't really know what to do with myself. Couldn't understand. There was just _nothing_." With a long, controlled sigh he lowered himself onto his back again, staring at the ceiling. "Is that what it's always like?"

The Master turned his head to look more directly at the Doctor, deciding how honest to be. "What, vaguely anticlimactic? All that fighting and rage and screaming and dying, coming to an end. Course it's anticlimactic." He shrugged, keeping his voice low. "But I like the silence, while it lasts. It's peaceful."

The Doctor said nothing. His expression was still, his thoughts turned in on themselves and inaccessible. The Master watched him, indulging for a moment his own innermost musings. To him, talk of the shared experience felt like connection. Proof of their similarity, underneath everything; their equal willingness to enact the extremes. There were few other beings in existence who could do as they had. They were destroyers of worlds. They could walk the universe as untethered gods, and it would fall before them.

But he knew the Doctor couldn't view the notion with quite the same fondness, guilt-ridden as he was. He tried to picture it: the Doctor stunned in the stillness that always came after great destruction. For the Master, that moment was the reward; the calm after the storm of the war drums, when he could finally gather his thoughts and the fragmented pieces of himself back together. For the Doctor, stillness and silence had always been the ultimate terrors. They let him think about too many things.

"I'd have done it for you, I think," he said abruptly, impromptu and all the more honest for it. He hadn't meant to speak, but the realisation had appeared fully-formed and insistent. "If you'd asked. If I'd been there."

The Doctor closed his eyes, unhappy. "Don't say that."

The Master shrugged again, suddenly feeling quite self-conscious. He wished he hadn't said it. The imagined bubble of quiet secrecy had lulled him too far, stripped his guard without him realising, and he'd shown too much of himself. Shown the parts the Doctor preferred to ignore. He drew a breath, trying to think of a last irreverent quip before he excused himself and bolted for the relief of an empty room somewhere, to salvage what he could of sleep.

The Doctor turned towards him. A hand slipped quickly across the sheets, daring to settle against his ribs, his spine. The palm stroked firm down the length of his back, up again over a shoulderblade, easing a shaky exhale from him at the unexpected contact. The other man shifted closer, hesitated - then bent forward until his forehead pressed against the Master's shoulder. He stayed like that, eyes closed tight.

"I really missed you."

The Master flinched at the sharpness of it, held his breath and kept still.

The Doctor didn't move, and didn't seem to expect a response. After a while, the ticklish gusts of his breath slowed, steadied. He seemed to sink back into sleep without difficulty. Soft and trusting and horrendously comfortable tucked against his side, the slight weight of his hand warm on his skin. The Master could hardly bear it.

As soon as he was certain he could do so safely, he untangled himself from sheets and sleepy limbs, sliding from the bed in furtive silence. This hadn't been what he'd come here for. He still wasn't quite sure what he _had_ come for, but he was desperate to avoid whatever awkward, tentative conversation they would have to have if he stayed and reality reasserted itself once morning came.

You couldn't believe anything that was said in the dark.

* * *

Whenever he found himself alone, he continued his exploration of the TARDIS and its contents. Sometimes it was with the ongoing goal of finding his escape; more often these days it was to cure his boredom. He'd already found some gems in lost back rooms - not least of which an apparent shrine to former companions. He hadn't let on he'd found it yet; he was waiting for a particularly vicious argument to put that ammo to good use. He was quite looking forward to seeing the Doctor's face as the Master laughed at his sad sentimentality.

So when he opened up what he'd expected to be another disused storage room, only to find rows of honest to God _cages_ instead, the Master felt his eyes widen in shocked merriment. Cages - no, _cells_ , he realised, judging by the further restraints inside some of them - crowded the room, all different shapes, sizes and designs. Some were simple metal constructions, big enough for a man to pace around inside. Others were smaller, tighter, made of materials like darminium or lined with energy-conducting crystals of different strengths. A reinforced tank sat off to one side, presumably for the event of aquatic prisoners, although it had long been drained of water.

He'd found the TARDIS's prison ward.

Grinning, he rubbed his hands together in performative glee as he stepped inside, already trying to determine the best use for this discovery. He was quite certain the Doctor hadn't wanted him to know of its existence, or there was no reason the Master himself hadn't woken up here when he'd first been brought aboard. In fairness, the cells were all empty and looked long disused; his fingers came away coated in dust when he reached out to touch one of the metal bars in passing.

Something moved in the corner of his eye and he turned - only to relax again with a huff of amusement. A full-length mirror was tucked against one wall, half draped by a canvas, and his own movements had been caught in the frame. He strolled closer, wondering why a mirror of all things had been hidden away here. A quick tug brought the canvas down to pool at his feet and he spent a few moments considering his reflection, adjusting the line of his suit, scowling again at the white-blond of his hair. He'd let some stubble grow in to try and make himself look less youthfully boyish, but he wasn't convinced it was entirely successful. Wondered idly if there was any eyeliner to be found aboard the TARDIS.

He started to turn away - and again something flickered in the background. He stilled, attention fixed suspiciously on the mirror. It showed nothing but his own image, and the shadowy recesses of the prison cells behind him, but he was certain he hadn't imagined it this time.

"Come out," he demanded quietly, hoping he wasn't about to feel superbly foolish. "I know you're there."

Nothing moved. He kept watching, eyes flicking intently over the glass, refusing to by assuaged. Seconds ticked by.

Finally, in the darkened reflection of the room behind him, a tiny hand slid out to grip the edge of a stack of storage crates, followed by a face peeking out from behind. The Master cast a cursory glance over his shoulder to confirm: there was nothing in the room with him - just in the reflection. How interesting.

The little girl edged out from her hiding spot, brushing dust from the skirts of her dress. All big eyes and curly hair, she lingered shyly by the clutter of boxes, so that she was only visible in the distant periphery of the mirror as though behind him somewhere.

He raised an eyebrow, intrigued and a small bit amused by the predicament. "And what are _you_? ...Or don't you talk to strangers, dear?"

She twisted a loose hair ribbon around her finger as though in deliberation, and then slowly padded closer. She came to stand just behind him, as a real child might hide behind their father's leg for safety. He couldn't quite resist another glance down at himself, just to check she wasn't actually there.

"Hello. I'm the Daughter." She curtsied childishly, wobbling a bit. "And you're the Master. You're trapped here too."

He blinked in surprise. "Alright. I see introductions can be dispensed with. How did you know that?"

"I've seen. The Doctor locked you here as well. He's mean."

"The _meanest_."

The little girl pouted, catching his mockery. "He used to come and talk to me, but he hasn't come in ages and I got bored, so I came looking for him." She scuffed one slippered foot, peering coyly from behind his leg. "But you were here instead. You're like me."

"Am I now." The Master could sense the faint field of psychic awareness probing curiously at him. It was too weak to make any real connection from beyond the barrier of the mirror, even if he hadn't been able to defend himself, but definitely a cause for alertness nonetheless. He stretched out a hand, cautiously tapping the cold glass to assure himself of its solidity. "I think I can spot a few differences."

"The Doctor locked you here for being bad. You've been looking for a way to leave."

"Didn't your mother ever teach you it was rude to spy on people?"

"She's trapped somewhere too. I can't find her. The Doctor didn't like the Family very much."

The Master gave a short, bemused laugh. "No, apparently not." He wondered what, exactly, this 'Family' had done to the good Doctor to earn such punishment. The other Time Lord wasn't one to give in to his cruelty often, even when tempted. This was a dirty little secret if he'd ever seen one.

Momentarily disorientating his perception, the Daughter carefully stepped in front of his reflected self so she was directly behind the glass, peering straight out at him. "Let me out, please. I can help you escape if you help me first. We can run away."

"Oh. I'm really not the parental type, I'm afraid."

"I won't be any trouble, honest. I just want to go home." Sudden tears shone in the big eyes she turned up to him, and a little lower lip wobble really brought home the performance, he thought.

The Master smiled indulgently, somewhat charmed by the juvenile ploy. "Of course you do. Seems completely on the up and up to me. But what would we do?" he mused, pausing as if just struck by the thought. "If I let you out, I mean."

She smiled secretively, bouncing a little. "The Family built our own ships. I could help you make one, or fix this one, and we can go."

"The Doctor -"

"I'll kill him for you." She peered through the glass intently, wide eyed and cajoling. "I can do it, I promise I can."

Taken aback, the Master stared at her. Something tightened in his chest, some unexpected spasm of rage that he struggled to conceal and which quite ruined the fun he'd been having until then. Slowly, he lowered himself until he was crouched at eye level, elbows resting on his knees. "Well then. Aren't you the most precious, murderous little darling."

The Daughter brightened, grinning proudly. She studied him in return. "You're a Time Lord like he is, aren't you?"

"Exactly like."

"You're immortal as well."

He wrinkled his nose self-critically. "In theory. Not very good at that part, to be honest."

"That's okay. I'll look out for you once you let me out."

Yes, he could just imagine.

"The thing is…" The Master rubbed the heel of his hand across the sharp stubble on his jaw, thinking. "The thing is, sweetheart, the Doctor's mine."

Her expression flickered briefly with uncertainty. "Then you kill him. I don't mind."

"And one day I might just do that." He nodded concession. "But I'm afraid, in the mean time, I don't tolerate threats to me and mine from uppity little parasites like you."

He could see on her face the moment she realised her mistake. Her chin lowered, eyes going wide and watchful, mouth tightening in a sulky little snarl. The Master let his own furious disdain leak into his expression. That this insignificant mayfly creature before him possessed the _audacity_ to threaten a Time Lord - let alone _his_ particular Time Lord, damn it all - offended the Master's very sense of order. Why the Doctor had left it alive in the first place he couldn't fathom, but he was quite sure _he_ wouldn't be making the same mistake.

He closed his eyes, turning his awareness inwards towards the damage at the core of this regeneration. He kept imagining it as a barely closed wound - and he tore purposely at it now, reaching for the power that spilled out like blood as he did so. His fingers clenched tight as electricity charged through his muscles, sparking visibly along the length of his arm.

The Daughter flinched back from the surface of the glass, a look of convincingly childlike terror on her face. She stumbled another step, and then turned to dart around his reflected self. The Master surged upright, clasping his hands together around the glorious rush of free-flowing power. The Daughter ran past him in the mirror, fleeing towards the shadows of her former hiding spot.

Acting solely on instinct, the Master flung one arm out behind himself and let the summoned energy tear free. A stream of supercharged electricity flew uselessly across the empty room behind him - and in the mirror, it struck the girl squarely in the back. She arched and shrieked and spasmed, crashing headlong into the stack of now burning crates she'd been running towards. The low-level psychic field pushed out from the confines of the mirror, a last break for freedom, and the Master took vicious satisfaction in shattering it with a thought. He sneered, and sent another blast of power after her for good measure. She didn't scream this time, but lay still and smoking amid the destruction.

His breath came hard from exertion, but after a few moments he smiled, pleased with his work - and then crumpled promptly back down to his knees as weakness swept through him. No longer channeled outwards, wild flashes of electricity coursed through him instead. It made the muscles in his body contract until he curled forward with a snarl. He fought to keep his eyes on his reflection, fascinated by the ghastly sight it made of him, his flesh lit up and burning from the inside.

A laugh dragged up through his gritted teeth as he shuddered on the floor, blinded and bleeding and dying yet again, and with no one to blame but himself.


	6. Chapter Six

"You murdered a prisoner."

The Master stirred and let his eyes drift open, momentarily disorientated. The Doctor's stern expression was the first thing to come into focus, frowning thunderously down at him. He started to raise a hand to rub at his face, only to flinch and subside at the now familiar pinch of a needle in his arm.

"Hm. You know how it is. Got bored, needed a bit of fun."

The Doctor remained silent, but his chilly disapproval could be felt easily enough. He was standing beside the Master, fussing with something above him. He squinted up blurrily, realising the other man was straightening the IV tubes coming from a hanging blood bag.

"Oh. It comes packaged now. That's handy."

"I have a stockpile," the Doctor snapped. "You know, for all those times I find you half-dead in some abandoned room of the TARDIS."

The Master abruptly remembered the pain of convulsing muscles. He stretched himself experimentally, then paused as he took note of his location for the first time. Not the recovery room with its sterile cot. Instead, couch cushions and a thick blanket thrown over him. He frowned, becoming aware of the barely controlled chaos of the Doctor's bedroom spread out around him.

"What, not even a spot in bed during my convalescence? Charming."

"We can always share again, if you really want," the Doctor muttered drily, sparing him a knowing glance. He finished adjusting the bags, then seemed to run out of things to do with his hands. He fiddled uselessly with the tubes some more, then reached up to tug an earlobe, finally settling hands on hips with a heavy sigh. "You hate the medical ward. Thought this might be easier all round."

The Master watched him, content for the moment to remain reclined as he did so. "You're angry with me," he realised quietly. "What, because I killed your pet parasite? That was -"

" _No_ , because -!" The Doctor cut himself off, one hand coming up to gesture animatedly before closing into a fist in a visible grasp at control. He drew a breath. "Because you could have killed yourself. And you did it on purpose, I _know_ you did. Worse - you didn't even come to get me! What were you going to do, just lie there and die? ... _Why_?!"

The Master stared, blinking owlishly in the face of the other man's barely reigned outrage. The Doctor started to turn away in frustration, hands up in his hair, and then just as suddenly spun back. It was like his strings had been cut as he folded down onto his knees beside the couch, elbows landing heavily on the cushions, the heels of his palms pressed hard against his closed eyes. He made a long, tired sound low in his throat.

"I'm just trying to keep you alive. Do you _have_ to make that so difficult...?"

He looked so weary that for a fleeting second the Master actually felt a twinge of sympathy. He couldn't remember much after killing the creature he'd found in the mirror, but he could well imagine the state he'd been in for the Doctor to find and drag back here. He wondered how close it had really been. He certainly still felt weak, despite the artron now flowing through his body.

A sigh escaped him, a wave of that same exhaustion passing over him too. They kept having a version of this conversation, and between them the right combination of words never quite got said. He eased himself over onto his side so that he lay facing the Doctor, who was leaning against the couch somewhere near his stomach. "I'm impressed. You almost sound like you really care."

The Doctor slid his hands further down his face, parting his fingers to peer tiredly between them. "Of course I care. Why would you say that?"

"No, you just don't want to be alone," the Master countered, oddly compelled to keep his voice quiet. "You said it yourself."

Finally, the Doctor lowered his hands completely to stare at him. His eyebrows came together, all wounded innocence. "...That's not it."

"Isn't it?"

" _No_. I keep trying to tell you that. I don't want you to _die_ , how can that possibly be a difficult concept for you?! If there's one thing we should be in agreement about, surely it's that!"

"It would make your life easier," the Master pointed out, not unreasonably in his opinion. "No more playing 'eternal caretaker' - that's what you called it, right?"

"Stop. You know I didn't -"

"We both know there's a way off this planet, somewhere. Eventually, one of us is going to find it."

"What are you saying?"

The Master lifted one shoulder. "Think of it this way. If I die, you can leave free and clear of responsibility. Back to your precious humans. So you won't be alone for that long, don't worry."

"I don't want humans, I want you, I want you to be okay -"

"And you still have that other timeline waiting for you, don't forget." He narrowed his eyes shrewdly, assessing the surprised guilt that flashed across the other man's face. "You can still feel it, can't you? It still exists, for you to go back to if you felt like. Pick up where you left off."

The Doctor hesitated. "Yes. Well, I think I can, sometimes. Getting more distant. But it doesn't matter - that is _not_ what I want."

"And _this_ -" He snatched abruptly at the catheter in his arm and pulled, dragging the needle free and letting it fall. Blood spurted messily across the couch, the blanket, the carpet. "This is not what _I_ want."

Pale faced, the other man grabbed for his arm and squeezed over the small wound. He ignored the swinging IV tube as though oblivious to the thin stripes of gore it was currently painting across his bedroom floor. "Why can't you just let me help you?!" he hissed furiously.

"I won't be _kept_ by you, Doctor!" he spat back, just as angry. "I know exactly what you're trying to say without _saying_. You think we're friends now, is that it? Maybe something more, because I let you get me off a couple of times - how sweet. You think that makes it noble and romantic, you keeping me here, keeping me healthy. It _doesn't_. You're still just a prison guard."

"Well you would know."

They glared at each other. The Doctor still gripped his arm painfully tight, blood oozing up between his fingers. He kept his spine ramrod straight now, bristling with tension. The Master tilted his chin up in sneering challenge.

Then, just as quickly, the anger drained from the moment. The Doctor drew a purposeful breath and bowed his head. He spoke without looking up, words audible only by their proximity. "It doesn't matter what you say to me. _God_ , it doesn't even matter what you've done. You _are_ my friend." He hesitated, sliding a glance towards the Master. "And yes, fine, you're right. You're more than a friend, at least from my side. You always were."

The Master narrowed his eyes, searching for the deception. He thought it was probably what he would do if the circumstances were reversed: the desirable lie to tease out vulnerability, charm compliance. The Doctor was more than capable of the same.

But he wasn't sure what he saw, if anything. At length, the other man heaved a sigh, breaking the scrutiny as he slowly folded himself down into a sitting position on the floor. He let go of the Master's arm gradually, checking to see most of the bleeding had stopped, before turning around to rest his back against the base of the couch. His legs bent up in front of him, arms stretched out and propped atop his knees. He tipped his head back against the cushions, eyes closed, exposing his throat.

They remained in vaguely exhausted silence for a while, the metallic smell of spilled blood heavy around them. The Master moved his cheek against the pile of pillows beneath his head as he studied the Doctor, thinking about what he'd said. His hand crept almost of its own accord across the soft weave of the blanket, until his knuckles nudged up against the back of the Doctor's shoulder. The other man twitched slightly at the touch, but otherwise didn't acknowledge it. The Master hesitated, and then raised his hand further, curling two fingers into the too-long strands of hair at the nape of the Doctor's neck. It needed cutting again, he thought. The contact, familiar as it was now, had the distinct feeling of indulging a favourite vice; the one real intimacy he'd been allowing himself.

He tugged sharply at the chunk of hair as though in reprimand, twizzled it jealously between his fingers. "I miss having dark hair. My fourth body, that had brilliant hair. You liked me in that body."

"I always like you," the Doctor murmured tiredly, still not opening his eyes. "That's the problem."

The Master's mouth twitched in a reluctant smile, glad the other man wasn't looking to see it.

"And I like the blond, too, if that counts for anything."

A snort of wry amusement finally escaped against his will. "I noticed." Resignedly, he gave a last twist of the tuft of hair before letting go, and then shoved himself up against the cushions to try and hold off the sleep he could feel lapping at his consciousness. From his new vantage point, his eyes landed tiredly on the cluttered bedside table at the end of the couch. If anything, yet more nicknacks had accumulated there in what, frankly, looked to be an abuse of Time Lord space-bending technology. He could now spot a teaspoon, a small purple plant, and one of the Atrian texts the Master had been reading the week previous, although nothing seemed to have been removed to actually make room for the additions. It was becoming quite the precarious monument. Well, except-

He sat up a little straighter, squinting suspiciously at the collection. There was one thing missing, actually, although it took him a few seconds to place, and even then he couldn't quite identify the significance. But sure enough, there in the middle of a room that hadn't seen a moment of tidying in the better part of a millennium, was the conspicuously empty spot where the broken bits of data card had previously sat.

Abruptly feeling much more alert, he flicked a glance at the Doctor to ensure he was still dozing, and then craned his neck to check that the pieces hadn't been swept onto the floor or inadvertently shoved behind something. But no, they were definitely gone. He couldn't have said why it felt important, other than it was an anomaly. And a gut instinct, he supposed. But such instincts had always served him well, in the way of all feral things.

He settled back against the cushions, thoughts turning curiously, eyes fixed on the oblivious Doctor.

* * *

_'Toniiiight I'm going to have myself a real good time / I feel ali-i-i-ive.'_

The music blasted near-deafeningly from the overhead speakers throughout the room, and the Master absently bobbed his head to the tune as he worked. His chosen lab had shaped up nicely. He'd scavenged supplies and equipment from across the ship - some he was quite sure the Doctor didn't know he had access to - and hoarded them to his liking.

"So don't stop me now, don't stop me... 'Cause I'm having a good time, having a good time." He half-sang, half-hummed the words under his breath, and as the tempo picked up he let his fingers tap out the rhythm against the worktop, next to the small pieces of circuit-board he had laid out in front of him. He was trying to piece them together, repair the connections. It was delicate work, and he had to keep forcing himself to ignore the music and be still.

He set tools down for a moment, happily sliding the length of his workbench in a burst of smooth movement, stopping in front of his computer terminal with a little bounce and rapidly typing in some calculations.

_'I'm gonna go, go, go / There's no stopping me.'_

"Having fun?"

He didn't startle at the question, unashamed at being caught momentarily enjoying himself. The Doctor had seen it before. The Master loved music like this: fast and loud and catchy, providing some of the only relief he ever got from the constant beat of four. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the other man strolling into the lab, arms folded and a curious look of entertainment on his face.

"I am, actually. Here to put a stop to it?"

"Nope. Carry on. I heard the music, just wondered what you were doing."

Wondered if he was unexpectedly dying again, that translated as. The Doctor was so often careful around him now, he'd realised. Quiet and wary and precise in what he said. He had been ever since his first apology, and it had only gotten more noticeable since it became apparent the Master was still sick. It had been almost pleasant, at first, being the subject of such cautious attention; learning how to send him creeping away from a flare of temper, or twist him into delightful submission.

Now, frankly, it was starting to irritate. The Master was tired of only sad, soulful looks and smothered arguments and the sense that any good scare would send the man running in a moment. He felt like he couldn't land a decent hit with the Doctor constantly skittering away from him, and it was becoming infuriating. He wanted _contact_. With the progress he'd made on his recent discovery, his own mercurial mood had settled buoyantly today, even playfully. He shot another look over his shoulder to ensure the Doctor was still looking, nodding his head to the music ever more energetically to count himself into the verse.

_'I'm a rocket ship on my way to Mars / On a collision course / I am a satellite / I'm out of control.'_

He twirled theatrically, arms up around an imaginary partner, mouthing the lyrics with fierce enthusiasm. The Doctor shook his head as if to deny the creeping smile which stole across his face as he watched. Coming to a perfectly timed stop, the Master relinquished his invisible dance partner and instead held out his hand with a little flourish, imploring.

Laughing nervously, the Doctor unfolded his arms as though to fend him off. "No, no definitely not, don't even -"

But the Master was already moving - quick, bounding strides towards him, then letting his momentum carry him in a graceful slide to close the distance. With his right arm he caught the Doctor around the waist, pulling him into the movement so that they spun together. He caught a protesting hand in his left, and the Doctor grabbed at him for balance with the other. The Master's sheer force of movement carried them a few more steps, turning, and then with a quick, ruthlessly precise twist, he tipped the other man backwards and somehow managed to avoid dropping him completely as the Doctor panicked and clawed at him.

"What -" The Doctor clung to his shoulders to keep himself upright, his useless trainers sliding on the floor as he tried to steady himself. Shock gradually gave way to a stunned grin, and then something that sounded suspiciously like a giggle. "Hello. You really are in a good mood."

_'I'm burning through the sky, yeah / Two hundred degrees / That's why they call me Mister Farenheit.'_

The Master hauled him back upright, flush against him, only mildly annoyed that he had to tip his head back to maintain eye contact. "Oh go on, dance with me."

"This isn't exactly the music -"

He didn't let him finish whatever half-hearted excuse was forthcoming. Instead he sent them reeling apart with a shove of the Doctor's shoulders, making him spin clumsily, before yanking him back by the hand. The Doctor was laughing outright as he landed back against him, eyes alight and crinkled in a way the Master would never admit he liked immensely.

The Master winked up at him. "Been a while. Think I remember the moves." He swiftly turned them, leading with his left.

"Been ages. The last time was that party on Gallifrey. Remember?"

"Of course I remember. You were your usual left-footed disaster, you made a right show."

"And yet you didn't dance with anyone else all night."

"How do you know?"

"Checked."

The Master sniffed. "I'd spiked the drinks. Needed you to make a spectacle, distract everyone."

The Doctor scoffed with pretend indignation. "Oh, so that's why we got so drunk, makes sense now.

"Boring bloody party before that, I did us a favour."

"You got us kicked out. I was sick in an ornamental plant."

"Good night, in the end."

The Master let his amusement and rare affection for the memory show briefly in his expression, rewarded immediately by the Doctor's blinding grin. They made a final turn, pressed tight from hips to chest. The Master let his gaze drift over the angular, lightly freckled face the other Time Lord wore these days, admiring. One hand moved against the Doctor's back, lower, to settle nicely over the slight curve of his arse. He raised an enquiring eyebrow.

"Fancy another go?"

The Doctor snorted. "Oh romance isn't dead, be still my hearts."

"That a no?"

"Didn't say that."

The Master smirked, and pushed him back towards the door. It wouldn't do, after all, to let him pay too much attention to the current content of his lab.

_'Don't stop me now / I'm having such a good time / I don't want to stop at all...'_

* * *

A few days later, the Master paused in the doorway of the 16th floor kitchen, sceptically surveying the scene he was met with. The Doctor was perched on the edge of his chair at the counter, dressed in a shirt unbuttoned at the collar and sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He had a mirror propped up in front of him, balanced against the toaster. The point of his tongue was between his teeth in concentration, his head turned at an awkward angle and his eyes fixed on the glass, a pair of scissors snipping gingerly at the wet spikes of hair behind his ear.

The Master sighed resignedly. "Is it that time again already? Truly, I can't wait to see what new disaster you inflict on yourself this time."

The Doctor gave a mild frown. "It's not _that_ bad..."

"You're not the one who has to look at it."

He moved past to open one of the cupboards, habitually taking out his favourite mug and placing it into the replicator. He programmed in instructions for tea with milk and sugar, listening to the gentle snipping sounds behind him while he waited, soft counterpoint to the drums. The last time the Doctor had cut his own hair, he'd taken a chunk out of the back that no amount of fussing and fixing had been able to hide. His mouth quirked amusement at the memory.

He turned with the steaming mug cradled in his hands, enjoying the warmth, and watched for a while as the Doctor teased out longer strands of hair and cropped them shorter as best he could. It was shaping up to have the same entertainment value as always, he could see that already. He shook his head, debating with himself. Then he stepped forward to stand behind the Doctor's shoulder, taking a last sip of his tea before placing it on the counter and holding out a hand, palm up.

The Doctor stopped. He turned to stare at the waiting hand without much immediate reaction. The Master could see his expression reflected in the mirror, kept carefully blank.

"I'll do a better job than you ever manage."

Still the other man lingered on the decision, shooting him a watchful look through the glass. Unmoved, the Master raised an eyebrow.

Slow and precise, the Doctor flipped the scissors and placed them into his palm.

He could well understand the hesitation. As he closed his fingers around the little silver handles, he knew they were both conscious a weapon had just been handed to him. He turned the scissors over, letting the light flash along the blades. The Doctor remained still, staring pointedly ahead in some obstinate display of trust. The Master considered the back of his neck. Thought fleetingly, helplessly, about what would happen if he plunged the point of the scissors there.

Another habitual tick.

Instead, he brought up his free hand, using his fingers to try and comb the tangle of damp hair into some semblance of order. His blunt nails scraped across the other man's scalp, and the Doctor shifted restlessly in his seat. He separated the longer, unruly strands at the crown, moving them aside so he could start at the lower, shorter hairs at the nape of his neck. He slid the flat of the blade along the Doctor's skin, pressed it there as he snipped. The other man moved again under the touch of the cold metal.

Curious, the Master peered down over his shoulder. A smirk started to tug at his mouth.

"... _Really_?"

"Shut up." The Doctor hurriedly moved his arm, trying to hide the slight tenting in his trousers.

He chuckled. "If I'd known you enjoyed pointless risk this much, you and I could have had a very different history together, Doctor."

The other Time Lord coughed, trying unsuccessfully to pull his shirt lower to cover himself.

Entertained, the Master continued working in silence for a few minutes, combing out and clipping. Hair trimmings drifted down the back of the Doctor's neck, and he used the pad of his thumb to brush them from the skin, dipping beneath the collar, until the other man squirmed away from him. He tried to cross his legs, stopped when his erection made it uncomfortable, and fidgeted for a few moments instead. The Master supposed it wasn't quite fair to hold the hair-trigger response against him, given that he hadn't exactly been permitted relief during any of their previous encounters.

"You can touch yourself, if you want," he commented at length, as though uninterested.

The Doctor almost turned to look at him in surprise, stopping himself at the last second. His reflection showed him flush in reaction. He didn't move.

The Master paused. He deliberated briefly, and then slid his fingers into the other man's hair, curling them tight in the damp strands. It had quickly become his favourite thing; the ownership of the gesture. The Doctor drew a breath as his head was eased backwards by the insistent tug.

"Do it," he instructed quietly, warming to the idea. "Touch yourself. I told you, I like seeing how easy you are."

In the mirror, the Doctor flinched at the words, even as his hands went obediently to his belt in a flash of movement. The Master watched with interest as he fumbled to open it, fingers clumsy as he struggled with button and fly, dragging at his waistband. He shoved his hand inside and made a quiet sound in his throat.

"No. Show me properly."

The Doctor wavered, shooting an embarrassed glance at his reflection. Then he moved to plant his feet more firmly on the floor, and arched his hips up out of the chair enough that he could yank the waistband of trousers and underwear down past the jut of his cock. He settled back with a rough breath, closing a hand round himself and biting his lip to quieten another sound. The Master dragged his nails over his scalp in faint praise and cast a lingering look down over his shoulder, curious to see. His cock was a little longer than average, although not particularly thick and slightly tapered. The Doctor moved his hand tentatively, up over the tip and back down again. He seemed self-conscious, long fingers only loosely curled.

"Good. Keep going." He kept his voice disinterested, privately amused by the effect it clearly had when the other man shivered. After a moment or two of watching, he resumed his ministrations to the Doctor's hair, letting his attention settle on the soft snip of the scissors. He listened to the rasp of stroking skin as he worked, the quickening breath sounds. He could feel the other Time Lord's stare on him through the mirror but ignored it, making a show of squinting in concentration as he separated out sections of hair and neatly trimmed them.

After a few minutes the stroking motions slowed, stuttered. The Master flicked a glance at the mirror, saw the Doctor gazing back at him with wide, uncertain eyes. He supposed some encouragement wasn't unreasonable.

He leisurely finished snipping the final section, brushed at the trimmings - and then moved in a sudden burst of motion. His left hand seized again in the Doctor's hair and dragged his head back, as he flipped the scissors in his right hand and curled an arm round to press the small, sharp blades up under the Doctor's jaw. The other man froze instantly with a startled intake of breath.

"You're not putting much effort into this show," the Master whispered, bending forward so that his mouth moved against the rough stubble along the side of the other man's jaw when he spoke. "Try harder."

The Doctor attempted to sit forward, but the Master's grip in his hair kept him in place. He swallowed, throat moving against the scissors. His hand had gone tight around his cock, a bead of moisture visible at the tip. Slowly, though with obvious intent, he started to move again. His fingers lingered near the tip as he resumed stroking himself, giving sharp, precise little jerks over the head that made his breath catch. The Master made note of the motion for future reference, trailing his mouth back over the shell of his ear and nipping sharply at the ridge of cartilage to make him gasp.

"You like this," the Master taunted quietly, enjoying the squirm it caused. "It's not even about your guilt anymore, is it? I think you just like that I can _make_ you do this." He pressed the point of the scissors up into the soft underside of his jaw, felt the frantic flutter of pulses against his hand. "Can't be blamed for spreading your legs for me if you've got no choice."

The Doctor let out an unsteady breath and made precisely no effort to deny it, the Master noticed. His hips lifted incrementally, movements getting faster in obvious excitement. His free hand grabbed at the edge of the counter, white-knuckled.

"Of course," the Master purred, amused by a thought, "that does put you at a certain disadvantage." His own mouth was parted slightly in vicarious pleasure and he was almost breathless as he added, "Imagine if I told you to stop now."

The Doctor's eyes flew open in the mirror, already looking half devastated by the threat. His chest heaved once in frustration, not yet slowing his stroking motions.

The Master bit his lip, coy and curious. "Could you, do you think?"

He watched in fascination as the other man struggled to find the right answer, too far gone in his desperation to want to give it. He squeezed his eyes shut again and panted through gritted teeth, arching up in the chair as though to escape the small blades, his trainers sliding against the floor. The sound of his hand on himself had gone slick with leaking arousal.

"Y-yes. I'd stop. I would." The clear plea not to make him went unspoken.

The Master dipped his head to press his nose into the warm spot behind the Doctor's ear, inhaling the smell of him. He twisted the grip on his hair, guiding his head back further and trailing the scissors down the length of his throat. The point left a thin scratch in its wake, and the Doctor gasped a pointless sound in response. The Master could feel how close he was; practically vibrating with straining tension.

"Do you want to come?"

The Doctor's movements finally stuttered. "Yes," he gasped, blunt with need. "Can I?"

"Ask nicely."

The Doctor whined and twisted in the chair, completely heedless of the scissors at his throat. "Please, Master. Can I - can I come?"

The Master hummed approval under his breath. He turned to press his face into the mess of dark hair and let them both linger there, savouring the poised moment on the edge of the other man's frantically building orgasm.

" _Please_ , please, I can't, I need -!"

"Yes." He spoke low against the curve of the Doctor's ear. "Right now. Come for your Master."

The Doctor shuddered, and then arched back against him with a shocked sound. Come spilled across his hand and one trouser leg, barely missing the edge of the kitchen counter. His free hand reached back blindly, holding on to the side of the Master's thigh as he continued to stroke himself through it. His mouth had fallen open, and his whole body kept giving little twitches of pleasure, thighs spreading further apart luxuriously.

The Master watched every second with rapturous attention, allowing himself the indulgence of preserving the image to memory.

The Doctor's head rested heavy against the Master's shoulder as he came back to himself, his expression lax, dark eyes heavy-lidded as he sought out his gaze through the mirror. The Master let him look for a few moments. Then he eased back, discretely adjusting himself with a wince. His hands weren't quite steady as he smoothed down the other man's ruffled hair, swiped some of the stray cuttings from his shirt. He balanced the slight weight of the scissors between two fingers for a moment, deliberating, and then tossed them onto the counter with a metallic clatter.

"See? Much better job than you'd have done on your own."

The Doctor shot him a hazy, incredulous expression, then looked down at himself and the mess he'd made somewhat helplessly. Gingerly, he put himself away and wiped his hand on his already ruined trousers. He might have turned then, but the Master remained close at his back, hands coming to rest on his shoulders to keep him in place.

"What was that for?" the Doctor asked, sounding dazed.

"You weren't complaining a minute ago."

"M'not complaining. Just. That was... different."

Carefully, as though conscious of giving into a temptation, the Master hooked his finger into the other man's shirt collar, easing the material lower and slowly bending his head. He held his breath as he let his mouth press there, gentle this time, tasting the skin. The Doctor made a relaxed sound. He moved his cheek against the Master in a quick, automatic gesture of affection, then tilted his head to give better access.

Unnoticed, the Master slipped one hand into his pocket, cautiously taking hold of the object he'd kept ready in preparation for days now.

"Wanted to see you like that for once," he admitted, voice quiet.

The Doctor closed his eyes, mouth twitching a smile. "Why?"

The Master paused, feeling an actual flash of regret. He sighed, lightly brushing the pad of his thumb across one of the little cuts left by the scissors. "Don’t suppose I’ll get another chance." Then he pulled his hand from his pocket and brought the needle up, pressing it unerringly into the fluttering vein in the other man's neck and deploying the sedative.

Lethargic with endorphins, the Doctor didn't react as quickly as he might have. His eyes met the Master's through the mirror, going wide with shock and a flash of pain. "Wh -"

"Sorry." He caught the Doctor's hand as it came up to grab at him, pressed it firmly back down to his chest. Letting the spent syringe drop, he wrapped both arms around the man's upper body to keep him pinned still. His mouth pressed close against the Doctor's temple. "Sh-sh-shh, you're fine, there you go."

With a last look of bewildered betrayal, the Doctor's eyes fluttered closed and he slumped in the chair. He would have toppled like a dead weight if the Master hadn't steadied him, pulling him back against his chest. His head dropped back into the crook of the Master's neck, and the Master let out a resigned breath, briefly resting his chin atop the damp mess of hair. He supposed that was the end of that particular arrangement, one way or another. It seemed unlikely that the Doctor would let him that close again any time soon, or be quite so amenable, once he woke and realised what had happened.

A shame. The Master had been enjoying it more than he'd expected.

Returning to practicality, he quickly moved so that he held the Doctor with one arm down across his chest and hooked his other hand under the chair-back, dragging the whole thing away from the counter. Then he edged round to the side and carefully tipped the unconscious Time Lord towards him. Somewhat awkwardly, he got one arm under the sprawling gangly legs and the other around his back, hoisting upwards. He staggered slightly as he did so, surprised by the sheer effort it required.

"My _god_ , where do you keep all that weight?! It's your ego, isn't it. It's developed mass."

Head lolling backwards, the Doctor didn't deign to respond.

The Master didn't let that deter him. It was actually quite pleasant to hold a conversation uninterrupted with his pliant audience. He turned round, accidentally sending the chair clattering over with the Doctor's errant feet, and made for the door.

"You're the one who started all this, you know. You really had it coming." He turned down the corridor, pausing to shrug the Doctor higher in his arms as he went. "The _indignities_ you've put me through in recent memory. Handcuffs, drugging, locked in this miserable little prison ship - you made me watch _David bloody Attenborough_ , for pity's sake! Listen, don't get me wrong, I respect the play. It's really the best effort you've made in centuries. Kudos and all that, I suppose."

He took a lift shuttle to the 32nd floor, humming tunelessly along to the infuriating Earth-retro muzak that the TARDIS had presumably once thought was charming. The doors slid open with a peppy little _ding!_ and he stepped out, wincing at the difficulty of maneuvering the lanky, unconscious form out of the enclosed space. The hospital ward of the ship was depressingly familiar to him these days, and he found his way to the room he wanted quickly enough.

With a grunt of effort, he heaved the Doctor's limp weight onto the medical cot - the very one the Master himself had woken up on that first time. He liked the symmetry. Standing back, he worked his shoulders loose and arched his spine, briefly circling the room as he stretched before returning to the bed. He bent over the unconscious Time Lord and hauled him further up the cot, then took hold of one wrist and raised it above his head. There were medical restraints built in to the base of the bed, and he carefully moved the Doctor's right hand through the padded darminium cuff and snapped it closed. Easy enough to escape with the use of a sonic device, almost impossible to sabotage without one.

Then he eased back, sitting carefully on the edge of the mattress, one knee up on the bed and his hands folded in his lap as he considered the sleeping Doctor. All those times he'd feverishly imagined overpowering the man, hurting him, enacting a half-thousand different revenge fantasies as he'd nursed his stinging pride - and now here he was, laid out helplessly before him like some dangerous temptation. It would be so easy to do anything he liked, really. Anything at all.

He slid his hand into the inner pocket of his blazer, extracting the small object he'd tucked there and turning it over pensively in his palm.

"Did you really think I wouldn't find it?" he asked quietly, quirking an eyebrow. "I know I'm not the best with attention to detail, as you so enjoy reminding me - but I _always_ knew when you were hiding something from me, Thete." He knew all the hiding places, too. They'd never changed. It hadn't taken long to locate the object of his suspicions shoved into the pages of an archived water filtration instruction manual, as possibly the only book the Master was even less likely to pick up and read than the Doctor.

He had pried off the shattered cartridge casing and carefully repaired the inner circuitry and memory storage in his lab. Messy to look at, but functional enough that he'd been able to salvage the information saved on the unremarkable little data card. To think, he'd almost crushed his own salvation underheel in a fleeting fit of pique.

Coordinates. A location not even that far - walking there and back meant he'd only be gone two Earth days, at the outside. Factor in a few extra hours in case it took a while to find what was hidden out there, maybe another day for repairs, but he foresaw no real difficulties. It was almost anticlimactic, in the end. Mundane.

He wondered where he'd go first, once he'd brought the TARDIS back to life.

Leaning forward, he reached up to check the secure fit of the cuff a last time, rattling it in its fitting and ensuring it was tight enough round the other man's skinny wrist that he couldn't just slip free. It was a necessity; he couldn't afford the distraction of the Doctor trying to stop him while he worked. There wasn't time left. He could already feel the gnawing ache of hunger that was the first symptom of his body's declining integrity. It had come so much quicker this time.

The restraint would hold. The Doctor would wake up with a headache and a shock in a few hours, but he wouldn't be going anywhere. There was a stack of water bottles and packaged food in easy reach that would last while the Master was gone; everything else could wait until he got back. He reached into the Doctor's trouser pocket, pulling out the sonic screwdriver and bouncing it experimentally in his palm. Then he slipped it safely into his own pocket, rising from the bed with a last studious glance at the other Time Lord.

He had enough time to make it there and back again, he was sure of that much. After that, well. He'd said since they arrived that he'd find a way to free himself if it killed him. And he was nothing if not a man of his word.


	7. Chapter Seven

Sprawled flat on his back on the metal grating of the control room floor, upper body hidden beneath the bulk of the central column, the Master grunted with the effort of securing the roundel that covered the dematerialisation circuit above him. Arm straining at the weight and awkward angle, he managed to hold it in place with one hand and fished the sonic from his inner breast pocket with the other, a few quick bursts helping to tighten the seal. That done, he let himself collapse back and lie still a moment, exhausted.

It had taken more out of him than he'd expected. First, the journey out to the precise point of the coordinates, growing unnaturally hungrier and slower with every step. The initial panic when there was seemingly nothing out there; the creeping suspicion; the euphoric realisation.

He raised a hand in front of his face, turning it one way and then the other to examine the damage. Blood and dirt encrusted his ragged nails, and his knuckles were swollen from scrabbling in the hardpacked earth like a mad thing. He'd grown desperate in the end, once again ripped open the wound in him so that it bled power, and hurled his frustration at the ground until it had cracked open like a vault. He remembered slithering down into the resultant crater, clutching his prize in manic glee.

The heart of the TARDIS, buried out in the grey wasteland like some unmarked grave.

Then had come the trial of hauling back the unwieldy space-time element, with the final indignity of digging around in the guts of the console with inadequate tools, trying to piece the damn thing back together. The Doctor had done his level best to sabotage even the remaining parts - but he'd never been quite the engineer the Master was. Repairing the transtemporal stabiliser had given him some trouble, and he'd ended up having to cannibalise systems from around the ship, but at last it was done.

The TARDIS would fly.

Stiff and painful, he slid himself out from under the control panel, rolling onto his hands and knees and then pulling himself up by the handrail. He slumped back against it, regarding the central column warily. It remained dark. He pulled the sonic out again and took aim. A click of the device sent the activation signal to the TARDIS systems.

For almost a minute nothing happened. He glared silently at the column, waiting.

There was a judder of engines waking up underfoot, so abrupt and violent that the Master grabbed again at the handrail to steady himself as the whole ship rocked. The console lit up in blues and greens, buttons flickering on, screens beginning to load data and images, switches flipping back to their default positions. Something deep in the ship gave a great groan of effort, and the central control column slowly illuminated before him, light spreading from it out across the ceiling and walls of the room. The Master watched with wide eyes, hands held out in tentative joy. A grin of triumph gradually overtook his face.

"Oh! Oh look at you! Gorgeous thing, _look_ at you!" He stepped forward to run his fingers gently along the edge of the console, then up to grip the handle of the gravity pivot with something almost like fondness.

Immediately, a high-pitched alarm shrieked from every speaker in the room, the lights across the console flashed red, and the encouraging whir of engines descended into a thunderous mechanical roar. He ducked instinctively, hands clapped to his ears.

"Well fuck you too!" He kicked at the base of the control panel, then backed away in the hope it would make the alarms relent. It did not. " _I'm_ the one putting you back together, you ungrateful excuse for a thirdhand rent-a-car! _Not_ your precious Doctor!"

The TARDIS took precisely no notice at all of this logic, continuing to scream warnings at him like he was some common intruder instead of the Time Lord responsible for restoring her to purpose. He supposed she still held something of a grudge, but this was beyond the pale. She'd grown _petulant_.

"Fine, have your damn tantrum." He bared his teeth at the control panel, jabbed a finger. "I have one last thing to do before we go, but make _no_ mistake, you _will_ listen to me when I get back."

He made it as far as skipping down the steps from the central column before the cramp struck, with enough force that he had to catch hold of the handrail again as he doubled over, groaning. Electricity flashed across the metal, heating it instantly, and he snatched his hand away in sudden pain. Unbalanced, disorientated, he found himself stumbling to his knees. He forced himself to go still, waiting with gritted teeth for the attack to pass, willing himself to hold together. He'd held it off this long, out in the grey desert, he only needed a little longer.

He still had one last thing to do, and then he would die satisfied. If not quite happy.

* * *

He slowed his steps as he got to the end of the medical ward corridor, surveying the mess ahead of him. The Doctor had of course made an enthusiastic escape attempt. When he'd evidently failed to free himself from the cuff, it looked like he'd tried to drag the heavy cot right out of the room. The mattress was nowhere in sight, and the heavy base was crammed up against the doorway, impossible to fit through no matter which way he might turn it. The Doctor was sitting on the floor of the corridor, his trapped wrist stretched out behind him along the bed frame. He was slumped forward like he was resting, or despairing.

"I knew you couldn't kill this fucking junkheap," the Master sneered, picking up an argument he'd already been having in his head for days now. "Too sentimental."

The Doctor looked up sharply, coming alert. He scrambled unsteadily to his feet, cuff clanging against the bedframe. "What have you done?"

"I've _fixed_ what you broke." His hand clenched quickly at his side, as he fought to control the anger that had ignited at the first sight of the other man. "How exactly did you manage that, by the way?"

"I asked her nicely. _Let me out_."

"No. I just came to say goodbye. ...And also fuck you."

"You need to let me out, _right now_." The Doctor's mouth was pressed tight with his own fury, eyes hard and flashing. "You had no right."

"Let you -" He stopped, made breathless with outrage. "That's rich, coming from you."

"Get this _off_ me and -"

"What exactly was the plan?!" the Master demanded incredulously. "What, we were just going to languish here until the end of Time itself, or - or until one of us finally put the other out of his _fucking_ misery because we couldn't bear to have the same conversation about _breakfast_ for the six-thousand-and-third time!"

" _Yes_ , that was the plan!" the Doctor snarled back at him, sounding increasingly desperate as he twisted at the cuff. "I told you that! I said!"

"But the whole time - this _whole time_ \- we could have left at any point we wanted, because all you _actually_ did, you ridiculous bastard, was march a few miles out and bury a bit of your TARDIS!" He threw his arms out as he yelled the last, a somewhat manic grin stretched across his face. It was unbelievably stupid. It was _funny_ , even. The Master had never been so incandescently furious over anything in his lives. It was even possible he was more furious with himself for falling for it.

The Doctor seemed to realise the precariousness of his position at last, eyes going slightly wide. He held out his free hand towards him in the universal gesture of someone trying and failing to talk down a situation. "Listen, just _listen_ to me for a minute. I know you're angry -"

"You don't know the _half_ of it."

"But this was fine!" His voice cracked slightly in fervency, eyes wide and appealing. "This was... good. I mean. Wasn't it?"

The Master bit back the vicious response he wanted to utter, clenching his jaw as he stared down the other Time Lord in disbelieving silence.

"This wasn't torture - it wasn't even punishment, not really! It was just... staying here. Both of us, away from everything we could hurt. What's so wrong with that?"

"It's _captivity_ ," the Master hissed at him. "We're _Time Lords_ , we're supposed to be ruling the stars - not _this_! How could you even stand it, knowing you could leave?"

"Where would I go?" the Doctor snapped back at him.

"Anywhere!"

"Not without -" He stopped himself, ducking his head for a second before bringing his all too earnest gaze back to the Master at full force. "I chose here, I chose _you_. I'm still trying to choose you! We don't have to go back to hating each other!"

"Who said I ever stopped?"

The Doctor shot him an annoyingly sceptical look. Then he sighed. "Please. You don't have to do this."

"I don't _have_ to do anything. That's the beauty of not being the one in restraints!"

"Just let me out. We can talk properly."

"Is that all you can say to me?" Cruelty rose in him, and he wanted to hurt until the other man's infuriating composure fell away. He let his voice drop, becoming soft and dangerous. "Maybe I'll keep the cuffs on you when I leave you on this rock. Take my new TARDIS and be on my way. That's the _smart_ way to keep a Time Lord prisoner, in case you were wondering."

The Doctor shook his head, expression closing off into something cold. "Great. So that's the plan, then, is it?"

"Yeah. Why not."

"You should know it's _so_ lonely being the only one of us out there."

"I imagine not half as lonely as being the only one of us on this _fucking planet_." He spun on his heel, gesturing expansively as he paced a short distance away along the corridor. "And anyway, I'm sure I'll do just fine when I find myself a decent planet to rule, maybe a cluster. Plenty of company."

The Doctor made a frustrated sound, yanking once at the restraint. "How is that still what you want? If nothing else, hasn't this shown you that you can just... _be_? You don't have to fight everyone in the universe, you don't have to conquer anything! Just be content!"

"With what?"

"Me!"

The Master stilled, his back to the other man. He couldn't see it, but he thought he could sense the flinch in the bitten off quiet that followed the outburst. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, glad his own bitter smile went equally unseen.

"There you go again with that infamous self-sacrifice, Doctor. Really should start watching that."

Somewhere behind him, the Doctor let out a heavy sigh. "It's not self-sacrifice."

"Duty, then."

"It's not that either! Will you please just - look at me."

The Master turned leisurely, ensuring his expression remained only politely curious.

The Doctor slumped, expression hopeful and suddenly unguarded. "Don't you get it yet? I _wanted_ this. Every moment, everything we've actually had the chance to say to each other after all these years - I wanted to be here!" He shrugged plaintively. "You were right, okay? If I was just being pragmatic I should have stranded you here and _left._ But I couldn't! I didn't _want_ to. I... I missed my friend too much. I wanted to stop running."

The Master stared at him. He remained motionless, refusing to betray a reaction. How carefully scripted the Doctor was, hitting all the right notes of heartfelt confession and frustrated truth. All the words he'd once wanted to hear, if a little late in the fifth act. The man must have been practicing the whole time he'd been gone. He let out a controlled breath, shook his head slowly.

"You're a liar. Always true to form."

"I'm _not_ lying." The denial was practically spat at him; raw and angry.

The Master gestured incredulously as though to encapsulate the entire disaster. "You've lied this whole time!"

"Well I'm not now!" The Doctor's expression twitched, eyes squinting up as he spluttered out a defence. "And anyway, you're hardly one to be casting moral aspersions. You... _seduced_ me so you could knock me out and steal my ship!"

"You'd been keeping me prisoner on this bloody ship!"

"Alright. Yeah. Well. _You_ kept me prisoner on yours first!"

The Master viciously crushed down the urge to laugh at the ridiculousness of the exchange, clenching a fist to keep his control. "Don't even -"

Pain ripped through him, stealing the words from his mouth. He sucked a stunned breath, felt himself doubling over, crumpling with the shock of it. He was blind as the light of untethered energy flashed through him, deaf to his own snarl of fear dragging through his teeth, the Doctor's distant panic. He clutched at his head, his chest, imagining that he could feel himself coming apart as the impossible wound at the core of him tore further open.

He was on the floor when he came back to awareness, his trembling arms barely keeping him upright, panting like he hadn't taken a breath, the Doctor yelling for his attention.

The light crashed down on him again like a reckoning, a rapture. All the wild brilliance of a Time Lord's energies unspooling, coming unfixed, in a body no longer capable of holding them. He wanted to scream, but couldn't draw a breath past the raging heat of electrical energy tearing through his bloodstream, burning under his skin.

The floor was a shock of cold sensation against his cheek. He gasped, shuddering as he curled tighter around the agony.

"Master!" There was a bang and scuffle as the Doctor pulled frantically at his restraint, straining as far as it would allow him. "You have to let me out, I can help!"

With effort, the Master slumped over onto his back. He couldn't see properly, his vision almost scorched by the light. His hearts were painful in his chest, racing and straining from the exertion. He tried to lift himself, bit back a snarl as he fell against the floor, weakness seeping through him. He couldn't get up, couldn't move.

"Please! Just let me out!"

There were only so many times you could gently tend the unsustainable. His resurrection had been wrong from the start. He'd been brought back crippled, dying, disemboweled - and the Doctor just kept trying to hold him together with sewing thread and hope. The ridiculousness of it made him laugh every time. Not that it mattered now. He'd let the open wound gape too long this time; dragged himself leaking lifeforce across the rocky desert and back again, every step powered by bitter determination and little else. He’d known there wouldn’t be any fixing the damage, this time.

He was finally dying.

"Master! _Please_."

He let his head tip to the side, squinting blurrily toward the other man. The Doctor was crouched down, one hand stretched desperately across the floor towards him. He kept trying to pull himself closer, bloodying his wrist against the edges of the cuff, the heavy cot grinding against the doorframe but utterly refusing to be moved.

That would be quite the predicament to leave him in, the Master realised vaguely. Himself dead mere feet away, the Doctor helpless witness and unable to free himself even afterwards. What an ignoble, undignified end that would be for both of them, he realised with a scoff of amusement. But no. The Doctor was a creature of hard practicality and every bit as vicious as himself, if needed. If he couldn't break the restraint he'd eventually resort to breaking himself to get free.

Easier to save him the trouble, really. A last indulgence.

The Master lifted a hand up, fumbling for the edge of his jacket. He reached inside for the weight of the sonic, slid it carefully onto his chest. His muscles kept twitching, refusing to work quite as he wanted them to.

The Doctor saw, his eyes immediately going wide with optimism. He held up his trapped wrist in the darminium cuff. "Yes! That's it, one little click, that's all you have to do, come on."

The Master ignored him. He didn't think he could keep his hand steady enough to aim, couldn't trust his grip. He clutched the sonic tight against his chest for a moment, bracing himself, and then hurled it towards the other man as best he could. It clattered and slid across the floor - stopping about three inches from the Doctor's reaching fingertips.

Dark eyes turned incredulously on him. "... _Seriously_?!"

The Master snorted, then tipped his head back and laughed. It spilled out of him, carried on a wave of manic, fearful energy. He looked back, and the sight of the Doctor clinging to the bedframe and trying to hook the sonic towards himself with a foot threatened to set him off again. He continued chuckling until the sound deteriorated into a cough, wet in his chest.

"Ah!"

The triumphant sound was followed by a sonic hum, a clatter of the cuff snapping open, and then the Doctor was crashing to his knees beside him. Radiating panic, he threw himself over the Master and hauled at his shoulders, trying to lift him. The involuntary electricity flashed, and the other man flinched back with a hiss of pain, only to visibly steel himself and reach for him again.

Mirth gone, the Master shoved at him, trying to get him to let go. He rolled away, helped by a particularly powerful cramp in his guts that made him convulse forward.

"Come on, I need you to try and stand, okay -"

" _No_." He nearly spat the word through his teeth, still pressing the Doctor's hands away from him. "Stop. It's too late."

"I'm trying to save you!"

"I don't want you to _save me_ , I want you to -" He stopped himself with a growl, choking on pain. Exhaled harshly through his nose as he stared up at the other man, willing him to understand.

But the Doctor shook his head obstinately, jaw set, eyes hard. "No. _No_ , this is not how this ends, not after everything."

The Master barked another laugh. "That's not how the universe works and we both know it." White light surged across his vision and he knew he looked monstrous as another wave of energy burned through him, illuminating his flesh from the inside. It hurt to talk, to breathe, as his throat blistered with the heat. One of his hearts was failing, losing the ever familiar beat of four.

The Doctor got his hands under his shoulders again, this time gathering him into his lap as he'd done once before. He hunched close over him, heedless of the danger, his hands on the Master's chest. "Why did you do this? You could have come back sooner, you could have... could have..."

He snorted, tasting blood in the back of his throat. "Stop trying to control everything. Keep telling you. You c-couldn't have stopped it, not forever."

The Doctor's eyes shone wet, cast briefly skyward as though in desperation, before returning to the Master's. "Please. Please, don't do this again."

He didn't want to die. He was terrified of the oblivion that came afterwards, had been ever since he'd seen it in the Schism. But what else was there to say? Neither his fear nor the Doctor's blind hope was enough to keep this fate at bay any longer. He concentrated on watching the other man instead, focusing, fascinated by the sight of his grief, the openness of it. Pain looked good on him. The sight made the Master's eyes sting, like looking into the sun.

"I don't want you to go."

The plaintive, simple statement hurt more than he was prepared for. The Master closed his eyes against it, forced a smile. "You'll be fine. You have a timeline waiting for you, remember. You can carry - carry on like nothing happened."

The Doctor clung to him, curled over him like he could somehow hold him together with sheer determination. He shook his head in immediate dismissal of the Master's comment, scrubbing a palm across one eye and swiping at tears. The back of his hand pressed hard against his mouth, like he was trying to force back words. Then his expression changed, slow at first, too deep in his angst to let it go easily. He blinked, drew a breath, sat straighter. A tear dropped from his jawline onto the Master's blazer, faintly audible in the sudden silence. He looked down at it with something like surprise.

"...I have a regeneration that's supposed to have happened already."

"Get on with it then," he murmured, consciousness drifting.

"No, but it's just... potential. Waiting potential, out there in the ether. The timeline's split, but it still exists..."

The Master summoned the energy to glare up at him, fighting not to shiver. "What, you're r-rubbing it in now?"

The Doctor moved suddenly, one hand clutched in his shirtfront, the other curling round the back of his neck and lifting. He slithered out from under the Master, laying him out flat on the floor instead so he could kneel next to him. His expression had taken on that dawning look of excitement that meant an idea was forming, thoughts visibly racing.

"What are you...?"

The Doctor froze, staring at him. Then he leaned over him, close, so the Master could do nothing but blink as his world constricted down to the shining brown eyes inches from his own. He felt the Doctor's hands on his face, a thumb stroked roughly across his cheek.

"I'm going to rip apart Time for you."

Struggling to think past the tightening in his chest, his sluggish awareness, he shook his head. "…What?"

But the Doctor didn't seem to hear him. He straightened, frowning down at him like he was a particularly enticing new puzzle. He spoke rapidfire, not to the Master but as if he was narrating each thought that occurred to him. "Should work. Don't see why not, it's my timeline, can do what I want with it. It's probably outside the Laws, sure, but we're the only two left, so. Who cares. Just need to figure out..." He stopped, hands hovering in the air between them, face screwed up as he evidently hit a wall in his thought process. His eyes snapped shut, fists pressing against his forehead like he was trying to summon an answer through force of will. "I don't know how to make it start. I don't know how to..."

He couldn't be considering what it sounded like he was considering. The Master could almost see the edges of it, but couldn't bring himself to believe. He brought an elbow up, tried to lift himself again. "You can't -"

The Doctor immediately dived back down, carefully pressing him flat again. "It's okay, I can do this, I _want_ to do this, I just need - a _minute_ , give me a minute to think -"

The Master giggled, but it made an ugly sound in his burned throat. There was blood on his teeth when he grinned. "Sorry. I'll... I'll try to die on your schedule."

"You're not dying at all, shut up." But the frantic expression he wore undermined any certainty. "I can -"

The Master felt it coming this time: the crash of light, the burning wave of energy, his body twisting in response. He gasped and arched up off the floor as electricity flashed around him, sending the Doctor flinching away with a burn blooming red across his jaw.

Apparently it was the inspiration needed. "Oh. _Oh_ , I need to feel it, of course! Stupid!" He scrambled back into place, his eyes tracking over the Master's face. Then he stretched himself out alongside him on the floor, lying on his side and carefully bracing himself to lean over him. He raised a hand again, hovering in the periphery of the Master's vision, not yet making contact. "You have to let me, this time, okay? It's the only way I can make it work."

The Master stared at him blankly. He shook his head, voice rasping. "Why?"

"Oh come on, don't do this, now is not the time -"

"I don't... I don't want..."

The Doctor dropped his hand back down to the Master's chest, fisting in the material of his shirt in desperation. "You won't be dependent on anything after this, I promise you won't, you'll be free. You don't even have to stay with me, I'll let you go, swear I will, but _please_ -" He ducked forward so his forehead pressed down against the Master's, physical contact, and he could feel him just behind that, psychic presence, holding himself back. "Trust me to do this for you. Just this one time, this _one_ thing."

He was scared, now that it came to it. Shamefully, horrifically scared. He'd been counting on fury and spite to get him through this moment, as it had last time, except somehow that brittle strength was gone when he reached for it. The Master held his breath, shaking, and then jerked a nod. "Fine. Yes. Do it." He dropped his mental guard in a sudden rush, a moment of fear before he could think better of it, and then it was entirely too late to change his mind as the Doctor descended on the invitation without pause.

Formless, nameless terror reared up in him as he felt the Doctor slip into his mind. He fell back from the intrusion, trying pointlessly to find somewhere to hide, trying not to be seen. This was a mistake. It had been too long. No one should be allowed this close to him as he was, it was obscene. The drums rose in cacophonous protest, deafening and violent, crashing down around them both until he was sure the other man would recoil.

Instead, as though attempting to mimic his namesake, the Doctor pushed reassurance and calm at him like a blanket. It fell heavy over his sparking nerves, muffled his panic. He was pressed quiet and small, held still. Undaunted by the warning drumbeat, the Doctor was an inexorable force unfolding his consciousness within the Master's own, determinedly spilling out into every darkened recess.

He'd forgotten, somehow. Forgotten what it was to share space so intimately; forgotten the staggering weight of Theta's presence. He reeled under the onslaught of impressions. The insatiable, darting, limitless curiosity; the lightninglike awareness, fast and cruel in where it landed and what it illuminated (and what it didn't); the remote, raging intelligence. Steelcable will, cold and implacable when put to purpose. Childlike, laughing irreverence. Wanderlust like an affliction. Loneliness like a wound. Hope.

He couldn't track it all, and didn't need to. There was nothing here he didn't already know, nothing he hadn't witnessed and felt before. Nothing that, at one time or another, he hadn't adored and resented in near equal measure. He let it wash over him, reluctantly soothed by the familiarity.

It was what lay beneath those known quantities that gave him pause. Or, perhaps better said, the possibility of its absence.

He crept tentatively closer, uncertain, like venturing where once had been known to him but the way long barred. The Doctor made no attempt to stop him, allowing him to sink past the readily accessible to the neglected space beneath. It wasn't quite as he remembered - but then he hadn't expected it to be. No longer the sweet, pleading fancy of a boy with a crush; nor even the cautious, enduring affection that had come after. The Doctor's love of him was a dark thing now, twisted up in old anger and hurt, but no less powerful for the alloy. He reached out, all curious reverence, called by something he could recognise; something that found its match in him. This was love that was needful and unrelenting and hard.

He shuddered relief before he could stop himself.

As though that was all he'd been waiting for, he felt the Doctor turn his attention to the now shared physical sensations of the Master's failing body. His secondary heart had stopped beating completely, radiating pain from the dying muscle. The heat of rampaging energy, beyond his ability to channel anymore, was burning through him and blistering beneath the skin. He couldn't draw a breath, his lungs too full of blood and fluid. The edges of his consciousness were closing in as his synapses shut down, what remained preserved largely by the psychic connection the Doctor held stubbornly in place.

The Doctor's presence in his head balked briefly, as the atavistic instinct to flee a dying mind took hold, but the Master clung to him. He tangled them together, dragging the other Time Lord deeper, wordlessly demanding the help that had been promised. The Doctor came willingly, letting himself be pulled to the damaged core of him. There was a shudder across their shared mindscape, as boundaries collapsed and any sense of self grew almost meaningless. The Master was dying, and the Doctor helplessly reacted as if he was too.

His regeneration stuttered and flared to life like banked embers, then caught with sudden fury. It rushed through them like wildfire, quickly moving past the Doctor when it found he wasn't the source of the danger and to the Master instead. Different to those he had experienced before, less a force of ruthless change and more of healing, he felt it seek out the many injuries and impurities in him, burning them clean. He gasped, felt the light and heat fill his lungs instead of air. The Doctor was threaded through him, mind and body and energy, as close as he'd ever wanted him.

And then just as suddenly it was done, and the world was cold and clear and painless. They slipped apart, minds becoming distinct and sacrosanct once again, defences reasserting themselves. The Master found himself staring at the ceiling in shock. He took a breath, relishing the new ease with which his lungs filled, hampered only by the weight of the Doctor sprawled across his chest. Angling a curious look down at him, he nudged an unmoving shoulder.

"Alive?"

"…Yeah." Slowly, with a wince, the Doctor turned his head against his ribs. "So are you. Can hear your hearts."

He smiled lazily, automatically tapping out the restored quickpace rhythm. A thought occurred. "What do I look like? Did I...?"

The Doctor lifted himself enough to study him, mouth slowly beginning to curl. "You didn't change. Guess I liked this face too much. Still look just like a Prime Minister I used to know."

He relaxed incrementally.

"Except blond."

" _Fuck's_ sake..."

Vibrating with barely suppressed laughter and relief, the Doctor slumped back across his chest, face hidden in the crook of his neck. The Master flopped an arm over him in response - and if he clung harder than he'd intended, fingers clawing in the cotton shirt, well. He blamed the adrenaline of regeneration entirely.

* * *

To his mortification, resuming his grand escape became somewhat awkward, after that. There was first the business of picking themselves up, unwinding limbs and consciousnesses, only to stand there in tense, bemused silence as the intimacy of the experience fell away and they were left once again on opposite sides of a divide. Neither of them said anything as the reality of the situation reasserted itself. There wasn't much to say.

Both filthy from days of working or captivity, it was by mutual, unvoiced agreement that they took themselves off to clean up before anything else was decided. If nothing else, the Master for one needed the reprieve. He stood in the shower with his hands pressed to the tile, water plastering down his hair, marveling quietly at the fact he was somehow still alive. _Actually_ alive, this time. A core of energy and health and potential, instead of death. He could scarcely believe he'd ever tolerated the difference. And now a borrowed life glowing away inside him. He hadn't known such a thing was possible. He expected few Time Lords did. Who, after all, had ever thought to regenerate _someone else_?

But of course, the Doctor had never seen the universe in such terms. It wouldn't occur to him that a thing was impossible because it wasn't done. It became possible because he willed it, and the universe - like everyone else - conceded.

Afterwards, traversing the newly thrumming corridors of the ship, he found the Doctor in his bedroom. The man's previous elation had quite definitely given way to a more subdued mood, his exhaustion visible. Perched on the edge of his bed, he leaned forward with his forearms braced against his knees, hands clasped between them. His hair was still wet from his own shower, and he was dressed only in clean suit trousers and a partially-buttoned white dress shirt, untucked and rumpled. Bare feet curled self-consciously in the carpet as he became aware of being observed, although he didn't raise his head. He looked practically indecent, the Master thought faintly, before steadying himself.

"I'm not staying."

If the Doctor winced, he hid it with a nod that angled his face away from view. "I know."

The Master lingered where he was, shoulder propped against the doorframe, arms folded. He wasn't sure why he'd sought the man out a second time instead of being on his way, except that their previous conversation on the matter had been... unfinished.

"What, no argument this time?"

The Doctor sighed, forcing himself to sit straighter like it hurt to do so. Hands gripping his knees, shoulders hunched, he swung a reluctant look in the Master's direction. There were shadows like bruises under his eyes.

"No argument. I said I wouldn't try to make you stay, I won't. You can fly the TARDIS wherever you want to go, I'll make sure she listens. Take supplies when you go, if you want."

The Master straightened from his casual slump, oddly offended and more than a little confused by the abrupt about-turn. Disarmed, he cast around for something witty to say.

"...Why?"

The Doctor exhaled harshly, shaking his head. "You get exactly what you want and still have to argue with me."

"I'm not, I'm just..." But he was, a bit. He snapped his mouth shut, readjusting. "What changed your mind?"

Dark eyes studied him earnestly, softening, before flicking away again. The corner of his mouth turned down unhappily. "You would have walked out of here, knowing you'd die on your own, rather than stay with me." He cleared his throat, head bowing. "I didn't realise. I thought... Well. Anyway. Doesn't matter. I won't stop you."

The Master slid his hands into his pockets, momentarily unsure how to proceed. This was the moment of his victory exactly as he'd imagined it - except not at all. He frowned sceptically. "What happened to standing between me and the universe? Finally tired of extending your so called protection?"

He certainly looked tired. One might go so far as to say defeated. He didn't move when he answered, speaking to the floor between his feet. "What can I say. I'm old and selfish."

"How's that?"

"If that's my choice... I'd rather set you loose on the universe than not have you in it."

The Master thought, cynically, that it was a joke at first. An insincerity, a cruelty. He stood waiting for the punchline. But the Doctor offered nothing further, and declined to look at him. They lingered in silence, a subdued tableau at odds with the violence of an hour ago.

He took a step back, hesitating still. His apparent freedom felt an awful lot like being cut loose. He was surprised to find that it mattered. His mouth opened, another half-formed questioning protest on his tongue, before it occurred to him to wonder what the hell he was doing.

"Bye, then."

"Yeah." The Doctor nodded, and didn't turn.

The Master strode from the room and stalked quickly along the corridor, the fingers of one hand tapping the drumbeat against the pad of his thumb. His own dissatisfaction chafed. He'd taken exactly what he wanted; more even than he'd expected. He was leaving here alive - stronger and healthier than he'd been in memory, perhaps, with the added treat that it was a prosperity stolen directly from the Doctor. He had outsmarted, outwilled, and ultimately wrested victory from the other man's clenched hands. Stood and listened to him admit his own defeat, his own weakness, in having to let the Master go.

He should be relishing. He should be _crowing_. It couldn't have been a better outcome if he'd designed every detail himself.

He was going to take the TARDIS to the 82nd century. He'd always liked that time period. He'd drop himself off at Cintra and secure his own transport from there in one of the port cities. TARDIS were hardly commonplace across the vast expanse of time and space, but the components weren't impossible to come by if you knew where to look and had the adequate engineering experience. From there - well. He would finally be able to go where and when he pleased. Not trapped in this insane blue box, or on Earth or Gallifrey, or at the end of the damn universe. What a novelty. To be free again, and alone.

Gradually, he stopped walking.

Not entirely alone, of course. He'd take on another servant. Not a human this time, he was sick to death of humans. Something better suited. Another malmooth perhaps, or a silurian. Far more hardy, and less willful if properly trained. Not much for interesting conversation, of course, but he suspected that was something of an unrealistic expectation.

Becoming aware of his own stillness, he resumed moving along the corridor, slower now.

He turned his thoughts instead to where he'd go, once he secured his own TARDIS and the whole of history became accessible to him again. He supposed he could pick up where he'd left off. Before the Time War - had it really been so long since he'd been free to travel as he pleased? - he recalled he'd been making a tour of the Ishta Systems. Entertaining himself inciting chaos in some of the settled colonies out there, just to see what would happen. It had been a holiday, of sorts, so he'd never lingered anywhere long enough to establish his own rule; but inspired a few uprisings in his wake to watch the fireworks. He'd sailed on to see the Crimson Majesties. He remembered marveling at the beautiful, destructive crash of nebula, delighted, thinking he would have liked to show the Doctor when -

He halted again.

Fuck.

Exasperated with himself, at his own unfailing desperation, he closed his eyes and let his head bow in thought. He shifted his weight, half-turning, then stopped again as he considered the vast difference between what he _should_ do and what he _wanted_ to do. This was madness to even be considering. He needed to leave, the sooner the better. He needed to get free, get some distance, and when this whole demeaning episode of his lives was a distant memory he could finally relax. He needed to escape - once and for all.

The Doctor's bedroom door was back in front of him before he realised he'd moved - and still he hesitated, flexing his hands at his sides to keep himself from reaching for the security panel. This was a weakness. A display of need he should be ashamed of. Here he was, at long last in the position of power, finally the one to decide whether he would walk away after a lifetime spent scrambling to catch up. It had never happened before. Why shouldn't he take full advantage?

He activated the security lock and the door slid open.

"We could always try going together."

The sentence hung suspended in the room between them, instantly feeling like the worst thing he'd ever said. He wanted to claw it back, a moment of insanity that had given him away, left him open and reeling.

The Doctor raised his head, brows drawn in honest confusion. "...Where?"

Awkwardly, the Master shrugged. "Don't know. Hadn't decided yet."

"What. As in..."

"As in you don't boot me out of your TARDIS at the first habitable planet, and I pinky-promise not to steal it while your back is turned, yeah. As in we don't stay _here_. We could just... go somewhere. Places. Together." He felt the alien sensation of his face warm with reaction, his hearts pounding in his chest, and had to consciously force his circulatory system to slow. "You said you wanted to."

The Doctor just blinked at him, glacially slow to process for all his genius, while the Master privately embarked on the process of dying from his own humiliation. What a waste of a regeneration this would be.

"But. I thought you wanted to leave."

"I do! If I have to spend one more minute on this Time-forsaken fossil of a planet it will be too -"

"I meant me."

The momentum of his flippant response promptly crashed. His mouth turned in distaste, willing the Doctor to let it go, to understand without explanation, to not be quite so tactless or dense just this once. But the other man just went on watching him with a faintly confused frown. The Master let his hands fall to his sides in defeat, realising he was being asked to say the actual words. He supposed he'd already started the whole mortifying exchange, there wasn't much reason not to finish. Eyes raised skyward, he cast about helplessly for a moment.

"...Look. It was always you doing the running. Not me."

The Doctor remained still and unresponsive for so long that the tension of the Master's high-key nerves finally snapped, leaving instead the dull, familiar ache of resignation, as he realised that the other man was trying to figure out how to turn him down. Why he'd imagined for a moment it would ever be any different, he couldn't fathom. He ducked his head while he composed his expression, trying fervently to keep it blank.

"Just a thought," he offered lightly, turning for the corridor again. "See you round then -"

"N- Wait!"

The Doctor was instantly on his feet, a look on his face that the Master couldn't quite pin down. He padded a few steps forward, and then closed the rest of the distance so quickly that the Master took an automatic step back, braced for some kind of confrontation.

He wasn't at all prepared for the Doctor to fling arms around him as soon as he got close enough, with enough force that they stumbled together back across the threshold. The Master froze, pulled tight against the taller man as the Doctor practically wrapped around him, fingers clawing at the back of his suit, head bowed low over the Master's shoulder.

Neither of them moved for a few moments, the Master too stunned to do anything and the Doctor seemingly content to cling to him in silence. He was trembling faintly with either emotion or exhaustion. At length, the Master managed to tilt his chin up with some difficulty, freeing his mouth from the hard press of the Doctor's bony shoulder. "So... Should I take this as a yes or no? Just for clarity's sake."

Laughter huffed shakily down the back of his collar. "Definitely yes. I told you. It would be my honour."

He stayed quiet. His own hands were still held awkwardly at his sides, reluctant to touch but not quite willing to pull away. Unseen, he let his eyes fall closed, let his cheek tip to rest against the warmth of the Doctor's neck. He drew a breath to relax the tightness in his chest, inhaling the soap-smell of the other man and luxuriating in the faint endorphin rush of relief.

Eventually, the Doctor eased back so that they stood facing each other, bodies still mostly in contact. His hands on the Master's shoulders tugged gently until he swayed forward enough that their foreheads bumped together. They rested like that, adjusting to the closeness.

"You really want to try this?" The Doctor sounded both disbelieving and elated, his eyes closed, speaking through a smile.

"I asked, didn't I."

"I won't run again." The words were a puff of breath against his cheek, insubstantial for all their weight. "Not from you."

The Master swallowed, pressing into the contact incrementally harder. He wasn't naive enough to believe that was a promise which would last once tested, of course, but for just a moment he let himself imagine; let himself play with the delusion. One hand rose to settle against the Doctor's waist, thumb stroking restlessly over the warm cotton of his shirt. As though he'd just been waiting for the encouragement, the Doctor's hands slid upwards from his shoulders, fingers curling around the back of his neck, the corner of his jaw. He shifted, tilting somehow closer, obvious in his want. Dark eyes flicked between the Master's and down to his mouth, wordlessly requesting permission.

The Master remained deliberately still. His heartsbeat sped with something like fear, though he couldn't have explained why. Kneejerk instinct demanded he step back, distance himself, push at the other man until he backed off. This was something different to sex, or any of the other games of control that had gone before. They didn't do this. They never did this.

The Doctor must have read it in his face, as he twitched quickly backwards, expression shutting down and hands lifting off him as though burned. "Sorry. I thought. We don't have to -"

Ever self-destructive, the Master reached up, caught hold of his shirt collar, and pulled him down to meet him. The words cut off in muffled surprise. It was off-centre for a second, clumsy, terrifying. The Doctor's hands quickly found the line of his jaw again, and he tilted his head to correct the angle. For a moment the kiss was little more than a dry, precise press of lips, a sharing of breath, careful friction. The Doctor closed his eyes and the Master kept his open, mesmerised by the sweep of dark lashes, the pretty scatter of freckles so close.

He parted his lips against the Doctor's, cautious, then with increasing insistence as heat rose in him. He brought a hand up, smudged his thumb over the corner of the other man's mouth, across his bottom lip, coaxing him open so he could dip his tongue inside. The Doctor made a faint sound of pleasure. The Master touched the tip of his tongue curiously to the points of those sharp teeth that so fascinated him, then past to curl against the roof of his mouth, earning a more urgent sound in response.

The Master crowded into him, pushing him backwards, turning them until the Doctor's back hit the doorframe with a thud. Hands on the lapels of his blazer dragged him eagerly closer, the Doctor arching into him. The Master ran his hands roughly down his sides, his hips, up under his shirt so he could touch skin. He scraped his nails over the flat plane of his stomach until the Doctor bucked in protest, gasping into his mouth and making the Master shove against him, desperate. He couldn't think properly, couldn't catch his breath.

The Doctor's hands pushed under the collar of his blazer, shoving it frantically down his arms and off him. As it dropped he pushed forward, and the Master found himself slammed back against the opposite side of the doorframe. He growled in annoyance, biting at the Doctor's mouth, the point of his jaw, down his throat. He tore impatiently at the other man's shirt, relishing the minor destruction of popping buttons. It was tossed down to join his blazer, and the Master immediately shoved his hand down the loose waistband of the Doctor's trousers.

The Doctor shuddered and stilled, one hand grabbing at the doorframe above the Master's head to brace himself as the Master stroked the pads of his fingers through the thatch of hair, then over the head of his cock. His hips snapped forward to press himself harder into the touch, eyes squeezing closed. The Master grinned, delighted when the Doctor kissed blindly at his bared teeth. He closed the circle of his fingers around the tip of the other man's cock, giving short, quick little jerks the way he'd watched the Doctor do to himself. He was already wet, leaking arousal across the Master's hand.

"Fuck, please -"

They pulled and pushed each other further into the room, stumbling, uncooperative, aiming distractedly for the bed. At the last second the Doctor spun them, so the edge of the mattress met the back of the Master's knees and he had to sit down or lose his balance. He had a moment to stare up at the other man in surprise, and then the Doctor was dropping to his own knees in the space between the Master's legs.

Their breath came fast and audible in the sudden stillness. The Master reached for him, but the Doctor caught his hand and held it still in front of himself, turning it palm-up. The Master watched, frowning, as long fingers stroked briefly over the hollow of his palm, the slight dampness of precome there, then moved to his sleeve. Deft and careful, he unfastened the set of cufflinks the Master wore, setting them purposefully aside on the floor before returning his attention. He folded the now loose shirtsleeve higher, and quickly bent his head to press a kiss to his exposed wrist. The Master drew a breath, lips parting in unspoken protest, pinned motionless by the little gesture. He could only stare as the Doctor took his other hand and repeated the ritual, right down to mouth and breath pressed against the veins of him. He was indulging himself, the Master realised faintly; taking liberties with his momentary freedom to touch as he pleased. And this was what he chose to do with it, of all things.

He let the Doctor settle back and pull loose the laces of his oxfords, easing shoes and socks from him and setting them beside the cufflinks; let him kneel up and reach for the buttons of the Master's waistcoat and shirt, the knot of his tie, dark eyes watching steadily for his reactions all the while. He caught his breath as the other man undressed him, pushing the clothing down his arms and leaning forward to press his open mouth against the Master's chest, his collarbone. He shivered under the contact, unaccustomed to feeling quite so accessible.

The Master curled a hand round the nape of the Doctor's neck, fingers pressing lightly against the base of his skull to tip his head back. Holding him like that, he studied the face angled up towards him, raising an eyebrow.

"You're feeling confident, all of a sudden."

The Doctor smiled, flashing teeth. His hands rested on the Master's thighs, thumbs running up his inseam, teasing contact. "Didn't seem like you minded."

The Master leaned over him, hovering his mouth above the Doctor's. He twitched back just enough to stay out of reach when the other man tilted automatically towards him. "Don't get used to it."

"Never will."

He kissed him, hard, thumbing at his chin to tip the Doctor's mouth open and sliding his tongue back inside, rewarded immediately with an appreciative little moan. Again the Doctor promptly took him by surprise as he surged up against him, getting one knee on the bed and climbing insistently into his lap. The Master grunted as his weight settled on him, heavy and solid, a shock of skin against his own. He groped at the Doctor's waist, licked into the hollow between his collarbones, gripped his hips and urged him to move so they both gasped at the friction.

The Master got one hand on his back and one on his arse, lifting with a sudden shove and turning so they landed across the mattress, the Doctor under him. The other man went on kissing him like he'd barely noticed the interruption, pushing himself back across the bed to make space for the Master to crawl between his legs. They fumbled at belts and zippers, getting in each other's way, clumsily stripping the last bits of clothing.

The Master hissed satisfaction as he settled over him, and the Doctor pressed his head back against the covers and arched to meet him. He spread his legs shamelessly, pulling the Master down into the cradle of his hips, rocking up against him. The Master's cock slid into the crease of his thigh as he thrust, so he got a hand behind the Doctor's knee and hitched his leg up around his waist, feverishly imagining fucking him like this. Neither of them were going to last long enough to achieve it currently, but they moved together in obvious imitation, rutting without finesse. The Master wanted nothing more than to hold him down, hold him open, and take him while he begged.

The Doctor squeezed a hand down between them and took hold of the Master's cock. He ran his thumb over the head, smearing slickness down the length of him and twisting his wrist on the upstroke. The Master swore under his breath, burying his face against the other man's throat, rolling his hips down and fucking into the Doctor's fist. He kept going, moving faster, sliding a hand around his waist and holding tight.

"Always wanted to see you like this."

The Master almost didn't catch the words, lost on a breathy exhale. He raised his head again to meet the Doctor's heavy-lidded eyes, knew immediately what he meant. There was no control here. No safe facade of distance or detachment, no exchange of power. This was clumsy and adolescent and completely without performance. He faltered, suddenly feeling exposed.

The Doctor leaned up and kissed him, licking into his mouth, pulling him down and coaxing him back into motion. Just this once, the Master let himself be persuaded. He shuddered as the Doctor stroked him, squirming beneath him trying to get contact himself. The Master reached down between them so he could knock aside the other's hand and take hold of the Doctor's cock instead. He circled his fingers around the sensitive tip, jerking quickly until the other man clawed at his back, panting frantic pleasure against his cheek. The Master braced himself on one elbow, lifting up enough that he could watch his face as he got him off, greedy for every wrecked sound, every stutter of self-conscious expression. Pinned beneath him, the Doctor writhed under the scrutiny, rutting up into his hand, trying and failing to drag him back down to kiss. The Master stayed pointedly out of reach. It felt like an act of self-indulgence to stroke the other man ruthlessly towards orgasm, and bask in the sight of the Doctor wanting him.

Words gathered uselessly in his mouth, unspoken. He'd never been able to just say things, boldly, the way the Doctor did. Not when they were true. Couldn't bring himself to say out loud _I wanted you too, all of you, just like this._ Would never say _I'm sorry,_ or _I forgive you,_ or _Thank you_. And he certainly didn't have the words to say, _I'd have done it all too. I'd have destroyed our home if you'd so much as asked, I'd have ripped out a regeneration for you, I'd lock you in a prison if it was the only way I thought I could keep you. You're **like** me! _He could only press the thoughts silently into the Doctor's skin as they moved together, with teeth and tongue and breath.

The Doctor came first, stiffening suddenly beneath him as though shocked. He spilled across himself, muffling a cry against the Master's shoulder as he shuddered through it. The Master watched, enraptured, stroking him past aftershock until he whined in oversensitised protest. Only then did he let go, reaching instead to grasp his own cock and finish himself off with urgent, jerky movements. He was already right on the edge, and came across the Doctor's stomach with a filthy thrill of ownership.

Heartsbeat pounding in his chest, vigorous and healthy, the Master let himself slump to the side and onto his back. They lay shoulder to shoulder, staring dazedly at the ceiling, fighting to catch their respective breath. The Doctor moved to rest a hand on his stomach, then thought better of it with a dubious glance down at himself. He rolled over towards the Master instead, pressing up against his side to ensure the sticky mess of fluids was a shared burden. The Master grunted a wordless protest, baring his teeth in vague warning, not particularly surprised when the Doctor took utterly no notice.

"You're not going to sedate me every time we do this from now on, are you?"

The Master huffed amusement despite himself, fighting the smile that wanted to stretch across his face. "Not _every_ time, no. Far too much effort..."

"You still haven't apologised for that."

"Wasn't planning on." It didn't escape his notice that the Doctor had said 'from now on' with such casual assumption. He liked that. Content and indulgent, the Master stretched and arched his back, bringing one arm up under his head - inadvertently making it easier for the other man to settle against him. The Doctor did so without hesitation, propping his pointy chin against his chest.

"Hm. The other timeline's gone," he murmured, seemingly without prompt. "Did you notice?"

"Is it?" The Master closed his eyes, tried to get the sense of things.

"Felt it close. When you regenerated, instead of me."

He blinked his eyes open again, carefully keeping his attention on the ceiling. "So it is. Suppose you really are stuck like that, then." He refused to acknowledge the faint sense of relief that crept up on him at the revelation. Regenerations shouldn't mean anything except survival; a change of face, a change of body, but ultimately continued existence. Sentiment shouldn't come into it. He certainly shouldn't feel _relief_ that the Doctor would continue in his current infuriating iteration. "Hm, shame about that hair."

The Doctor snorted offended laughter, nails scraping lightly across his ribs.

The Master brought his hand down, winding his fingers through the disaster hair in question, casually possessive. "So go on, then. If we're actually going to do this. Where do you want to go?"

The Doctor peered up at him thoughtfully. Then he smiled - blinding, blazing with excitement.

"Everywhere."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. GUYS! It's done.
> 
> Some self-indulgent finishing notes. This story means so much to me for a number of reasons, not least because this is genuinely the first time I've put pen to paper since 2015. I didn't think I could do it anymore. This started off as a last-ditch attempt to get myself out of a depression period, it was only supposed to be a quick 3000 word oneshot written over a difficult weekend, and instead it just... kept going. I could not be happier with the end result, and all of the wonderful comments and reactions from people on here. Thank you so much <3
> 
> I've already mentioned in a couple of replies, but as I seem to have set myself up an AU here, and my fixation with this fandom hasn't gone away yet, I'm debating the idea of a sequel. I'm a fairly slow writer, but if anyone has an interest, it may be something to keep an eye out for in a few months' time.
> 
> Again, thank you all for the lovely comments, I can't explain what they've meant to me.


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